What Makes a Quality Piano?

What Makes a Quality Piano?

One of the most common questions technicians are asked goes along the lines of, "How good is my piano?" or "Is this a quality piano?" Often times I find myself trying to explain as politely as possible to a pressing customer why their piano doesn't sound so good. This is somewhat a difficult thing to do, especially once you finish servicing their instrument and accept the check.

When looking for "quality" in an instrument, you must first understand that there are two kinds of quality to inspect. Craftsmanship quality, and material quality. An expert piano maker cannot make a quality piano with poor materials, and a novice piano maker cannot usually make a quality piano even if he has the best of materials. So in short, when assessing the quality of an instrument, you must combine both of these factors into a single final measurement, assessing both craftsmanship and materials at the same time.

Craftsmanship quality is usually fairly easy to realize and appreciate. Clean glue joints, countersunk screw heads, well sanded and finished wood, properly aligned hinges and hangers, etc. If your piano shows any sign of sloppy gluing, careless screw placement, or improperly aligned parts, you can be sure the craftsmanship is poor.

Now, I cannot leave off there. In nearly all factories throughout all of history, the factory technicians how build the outside of the piano (what you see) and the inside of the piano (the actual working parts) are completely separate teams. The operators that build the cabinet of the piano are very good at doing that, and most pianos look very nice from the outside. You cannot use the outside appearance of a piano to judge quality, even from good name brands. To properly assess quality craftsmanship, you must look inside the piano at the action mechanism, the keys, and other aspects of the piano.

Now, material quality is harder to assess for someone who doesn't know what quality materials would be. A piano action consists of cloth such as felt and cotton, leathers such as buckskin, wood, and sometimes plastics. Knowing the difference between real cloth and synthetic cloth is fairly easy. The felt will be very soft and smooth as well as evenly colored. The cotton braid will usually have a similar texture to a very soft cotton T-shirt, and will be neatly braided and wound around strings.

Quality leather is to detailed to get into here, but in most cases if it's real leather it's good enough and you don't have to worry about the quality of it so long as it is real and not synthetic or a leather substitute.

Finally, there is the matter of the wood. Quality hardwoods woods will have nice, even grains, free from knots or burrs. There will be no cracks or splits that are formed because the wood was to dried out when building the piano, and it will look consistently uniform in color even as it ages.

So, a quality piano will have good craftsmanship as well as good materials. You can never trust a piano based on its outside appearance or it's name brand. Always look inside the piano to assess quality. At a glance you can usually get a very fast, rough estimate of its quality simply by looking for neatness and order on the internal parts of the piano.

I hope you find this to be helpful! If you have any questions about your piano, please contact us through our website with your questions and pictures if you have them!

Alex Swanson
http://www.alexswansonmusic.com