Yamaha U1

Over the past number of years I have been in the market for a new piano. During this time I have likely tried over 500 pianos at various outlets in a 400km radius, each unique and in some way unacceptable. Buying a piano is a strange business, in fact it may be one of the most difficult items to purchase period.

The most important thing is to play the instrument, listen to it, spend some quality time with it… Sounds easy right? Unfortunately this may not be possible. I can guarantee with 100% certainty there will be some kid pounding the keys of another piano on display, or some sales person making a massacre of Fur Elise or worse, rocking out to his/her version of Memory from Cats. Next, once it has been established that you can play the instrument, (impossible to avoid since you can’t get to know a piano by playing chopsticks) two divergent paths emerge that will either increase your ability to evaluate the piano or will affect your prompt exit from the store. Path 1 - The sales person realizes that since you can play you are a serious buyer, a person requiring a certain environment in which to test the available pianos before making a decision - he/she quickly proceeds to enforce the one piano at-a-time rule, and answers questions while offering tidbits of sporadically useful information. Path 2 - The sales person realizes that since you can play you are a serious buyer, and proceeds to bombard you with useless information to make any piano in the place out to be the best piano in the place often contradicting previous statements depending on your perceived enjoyment of the current instrument. Of course no salesperson good or bad can make a piano sound better, and no salesperson can tell you one piano sounds better than another.

Regardless of the process I finally found a suitable piano and had the guts to spend the money both at the same time. I now have a Yamaha U1, and am very happy with every aspect of its sound and action. Perhaps I will add a piano buying guide for mid-range pianos to the site.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2006 at 20:40:39 and is filed under Piano. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.