Best Piano Brands
It’d be much easier to know what the best piano brands are if you could simply trust a piano name to be consistent across its pianos, but there have always been lots of changes in piano manufacturing companies and the situation is complicated by the fact that grand pianos last several decades – often long after a manufacturer has gone out of business or been purchased.
Steinway stands out as the most solid brand. It has been consistently delivering high-quality pianos for over a hundred years. After that, piano brands get complicated.
Boston pianos are made by Steinway as an entry-level option. Baldwin pianos are great, but only ones made before the mid-1990’s when the company went bankrupt and was bought by Gibson Guitar – since then, Baldwins have lost their original quality. Samick makes all kinds of its own instruments and owns a little bit of several large manufacturers (including Steinway) and came close to buying Young Chang. Lots of old American company names have been purchased and rejuvenated by Chinese companies.
To further complicate the issue, many piano companies produce digital pianos as well, to varying degrees of quality and unrelated to acoustic piano quality. On top of that, old pianos are restored all of the time and some companies surely source out many of the parts, which makes further blurs the line.
It’s a difficult map to navigate, but if you know the year of the piano and look up the history of its brand name, do a bit or research and you should be in good shape!
Be sure to check out more piano articles:
- How To Choose a Piano » (in the show room)
- How To Pick a Piano » (at the keys)
- Piano Character » (my philosophy)
- More Tips for Buying A Piano » (PianoWorld article)