Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Is the Acoustic Piano market on the way out?

Just had a visit with a local piano dealer, who has been in business for over 100 years. He sells mostly acoustic pianos, and a small selection of digital pianos. He feels that within 10 years almost 100% of the market for new pianos will be digital. With the advances with the V-piano and the Avant Grand, he feels that both Yamaha and Roland will build on that technology and move forward, and at the same time, much like the computer market, prices will come down. He felt that because of the cost of building and maintaining acoustic pianos, the digital market will continue to grow. What do members think? Cheers!

Unless they can make an acoustic piano that won't go out of tune, more and more people will turn to digitals, especially with the newer technology replicating the sound and the action so accurately....now, they can even replicate the feedback.

I see Chick Corea is is endorsing the Yamaha Avant Grand N3...no doubt more will follow, and we must also remember, the Avant Grand N2/N3 are supposedly the beginning of a whole new series. The V-Piano will also have it's own offspring.

I think Yamaha, who makes acoustic pianos, has realized that digitals are a serious consideration, since the Avant Grand was developed by both the acoustic and electronic divisions.

There will be those of the "I must have an acoustic" persuasion, but they are getting less in numbers...most of my piano playing friends in Nashville are using digital pianos for live gigging, although a few studios still rely on the acoustics that they've had for years.

Mic'ing an acoustic for stage use is very difficult...in a studio, the mics are more or less left in place permanently.

I won't miss the acoustic piano if it does become extinct. I don't miss my Steinway B one tiny bit since I've been playing the Avant Grand.

Snazzy

When I was making the deal for the purchase and installation for my Rodgers organ, I made part of the deal that they would remove my Nordheimer upright grand. The dealer told me that he had a warehouse full of such pianos, which he couldn't sell. People mostly wanted digitals or small acoustics. No market at all for larger instruments. (So I guess size does matter!) I had tried to sell the Nordheimer, with no success, and then offered it for free, with still no takers.

When I listed my HP-207 for sale (one of two that I owned at the time) it sold within 1-1/2 weeks. (I had two: one for home use, and one for the church. I still use the one at the church - very effective for rehearsing the choir.) I replaced my home HP-207 with a Roland RD-700gx, which I then replaced with V-Piano, and now I'm thinking of the Yamaha CP1).

Some purchasers of grand pianos are buying it for status or furniture, and cannot even play it! (Sad, but true). However, most buying grands are actually buying them to to play them!

Lawrence

He is right. The market for Acoustic pianos will decline. Already it is literally 1/10th of what it once was. In my Grandmother's time (she was born in 1911) most houses had pianos in them. Today very few do.

But I think there will always be acoustic pianos in the way that there will always be clarinets, violins and drums. An acoustic grand piano is needed for public performance of classical works and people will want to practice on them. My experience (and some experiments I've done) lead me to believe that anything that sounds like a grand piano will need to be as large and massive as a grand piano. The cost of DPs is going down but not the cost of such large and massive objects.

I think digitals will mostly cut into sales of the uprights pianos.

I think Yamaha endorses Chick Corea:

http://www.yamaha.com/Artists/ArtistDetail.html?CNTID=29415

If so, I'd take that with a huge grain of salt (i.e. completely ignore it).


Agree 100%. I jam a MIDI file into standalone Pianoteq and a out pops a wave file on the other end. Incredibly simple & it totally fools me (which is all I ask - I'm really easy to please when it comes down to it).

Largely, yes. Though it will go out faster if DP manufacturers can get their act together.

That is all.

You'd better watch all that salt...it's bad for your pressure.

Snazzy

I'll echo other opinions above, with one proviso: Acoustic grand pianos will not likely ever be completely eliminated.

Their numbers will drop significantly, but they won't disappear completely (I've a piano rebuilder friend that is considering a change in careers because acoustic sales are way down).

Of course, these comments are going to incur the wrath of a certain individual (un-named) that will be incensed over them.

. . . just waiting . . .

Glenn

The acoustic piano industry will basically parallel the photographic industry. Just look at the once giant of the industry Kodak, now a mere shadow of its former self. Only as recent as 1990, any talk of digital photography would ever over take that of film photography would be considered unlikely. Besides, people were so familiar with the universality of the 35 mm film, and digital photos had such poor resolution.

Once there were 35 mm film processing and printing shops everywhere. Then some years back, they started to go out of business very rapidly to now, you would be hard pressed to find yourself a custom film processing and print enlargement shop that still handle either B&W or color film. For the acoustic piano, it will be the availability of the piano tuner technician. Once those professionals start declining significantly in numbers, it is no longer an option for most consumers to buy an acoustic piano whether or not it is better or not.

A small number of very skilled tuners will always be available to service the concert hall and conservatories, the very serious places, but for homes, it may get to a point where a consumer would either have to learn piano tuning as well or just buy a digital. Those who live near large cities may be able to hang on to their acoustics a bit longer while the tuners are still available. But at some point, the few available tuners would have to charge so much that few would want to pay the increasingly more expensive cost of maintaining a niche product unless the piano happens to be in Carnegie Hall or Julliard's.

With Moore's Law in effect and computing power doubling every 18 months, it is only a matter of time that a small processing circuit the size of a small notebook computer would have enough processing power to virtually recreate the experience of of an acoustic piano or at least the difference between a virtual piano and a real piano would no longer be enough to matter to any amateur. It is only a matter of time.

For recording, we've already reached that point IMHO.

Greg.

Acoustics may be in decline but real pianos won't go away so long as there's people who know the difference between a piano and a simulator and who can afford the real thing. As good as high end digitals are they ain't pianos any more than flight simulators are airplanes.

I can't agree with you there, Mr. Bilge. I've just replaced a Steinway B with an Avant Grand, and I couldn't be happier. I've had plenty of experience (40 plus years) with acoustic pianos, and most of it has not been good. Tuning, has always been an issue with me, and, although I don't have perfect pitch, it is definitely up to scratch enough to hear the instrument go out of tune with itself and other instruments.

My Steinway is in fantastic condition, but after a few weeks, it starts to go out, as do most acoustics...then, it needs the services of a tuner; which involves money and inconvenience.

Sorry, but even a decent digital provides much more playing pleasure for me; of course, your mileage obviously varies, but perhaps your ear can "adjust" to tuning discrepancies (or you know how to tune), but I can not.

The quicker the demise of the acoustic...the happier I will be.

They should rip out the innards of grand pianos, and put in a digital piano, for those who have to have the look.

And finally...digitals are pianos...not acoustic pianos, but pianos nevertheless...they sound like pianos, they play like pianos, and with the Avant Grand, they feel like pianos...they just hold their tune 100% better...that's all.

Snazzy

Hi.

I think that acoustic pianos will never dissapear. Digital pianos are very nice, flexible, suitable for an apartment or small house, don't need maintenance... I chose one, even when I own an old W.H. Barnes upright piano.

I'm sure manufactures will be closer and closer to a real piano, but your ears and hands will still finding diferences, and if not, the prices for these instruments will be very high. Technology is always becoming cheaper, but not wood, and also the human touch applied for making musical instruments.

I tried to argue from another point of view: why can anyone re-sell a second hand mint condition acoustic piano for a good price? Can do the same with a digital one?

I'm not an expert on the piano market, I only tried to get the solution for my needings, and it was a Kawai CN32. But I'm into the guitar world for many years, and I know that good musical instruments will never dissapear, and it's almost impossible to get them for cheaper prices.

Well, I know and understand the advantages of digital pianos and I wouldn't want to miss those advantages, but under no circumstances can they truly replace a true, acoustic piano, not yet anyway and I believe not in a long time. I have tested AvantGrand and V-Piano, and they are absolutely awesome and on a recording it would be hard to distiguish acoustic from digital and advancing technology might make the feel and sound of digitals even better, but what makes a real difference is the sound production itself. Even in the great AvantGrand you can obviously hear speakers playing piano sound. It's kind of like hearing a recording of incredibly great quality, but still a recording and not a live performance. You can hear the difference between real strings and fake speakers.
And on a less rational side, it's just more fun knowing you play a REAL instrument, not a great simulation =D
I'm not an enemy of digital pianos, I nearly bought a v-piano myself, and I'm sure digital pianos will sell better than acoustic ones, but the idea of the acoustics dying out altogether is preposterous.

The one thing that I think DPs are a long way off in duplicating an acoustic are the acoustic properties of an instrument. The entire instrument vibrates in order to create the sound, not just the strings and the sound board. With a DP, if anything vibrates with it it is an annoyance, a disturbance to the sound. Because of the need for DP manufacturers to eliminate any sympathetic vibrations in the instrument, we only get the sound from the speakers - by design - and the sound is mostly directed somewhere. Acoustic piano sound goes out in all directions from an acoustic (although some directional sound is created by the lid). This allows the sound to fill the room and bounce off of everything in it. Now I suppose if you could spend $10k on some nice speakers and put them in the right place for the shape of the room, you might be able to get close. But then it's more like you are the audience and not the performer, because the instrument still isn't vibrating, only the speakers are.

For classical pianists, I think that acoustic pianos will remain. I do believe the days of having an upright in every household are gone, however. I will recommend an acoustic (in good condition) any day to a student except if size or sound bleeding is a consideration.

As for the tuning thing, if I had to I could certainly learn how to do it myself. I have watched my piano tuner enough that I know I could get a few books or take a class and do it.

Something I want to point out, however, is that when listening to all the great piano software out there, the downfall is that everything is perfectly in tune, and so it was recommended to me by someone (ChrisA I believe) that you want to detune a couple of the keys to make it sound more realistic. I think that when you are listening to any live instrument in a concert, the slight out of tuneness is what makes it alive and exciting. I'm not talking about someone constantly singing flat, but simply that there is something organic and alive about this aspect that is desirable. A digital that doesn't have a few notes detuned sound very sterile, IMO.

Hehe, we were typing at the same time! I agree with you wholeheartedly. There is something exciting about playing my acoustic pianos vs. the digital, and I love my Roland fp-7. I was playing my parent's Clav (not sure the model, but whatever the base model is), and I was not impressed with the sound quality at all, although it felt OK to play. But it was really the fact that you don't feel like you are making the sound yourself, but just a spectator. Similar to those video games where you "play" and instrument by pressing the Y button over and over again, though certainly the same skills to play well on an acoustic are required to play well on a DP. Simply the disconnect from the physical manipulation to the acoustic sound is the troubles me. It's like banging a pot with a spoon but the sound coming from somewhere other than where the spoon hits the pot.

Selling a second hand acoustic, unless it is a big name instrument, like Yamaha, Bechstein, Steinway, or Bosendorfer to name some, you are going to have a tough time getting a decent price.

Those with Young Chang, Samick or Pearl River are in a very tough situation.

Even worse, is trying to sell an upright.

There are plenty of stories to back this up in the other sections of this forum.

Generally, people buy an acoustic grand for life, but situations change...divorces, deaths, and the need for different living conditions often force the sale of these instruments, and, generally, the outcome is not good, unless the instrument has a valued name...and even then, there are sometimes big losses.

Yes, there will be acoustic grands used in concert halls, and maybe the odd jazz club, and of course, some homes, but the buying direction is definitely away from acoustic and towards the convenience of the digital.

The original poster mentioned almost 100% would be digital in 10 years...almost is not all...but we're getting closer every year.

Snazzy

I am not disagreeing with this, except to say that for classical piano aficionados, whether professionals or amateurs, there will be a preference because of the disparity in the way the sound is produced. There is also a difference in feel, but I think that technology will soon be able to overcome that issue if they haven't already (I haven't played a V-piano or Avant). Even a good upright piano I think is better than a good digital in this area.

I agree wholeheartedly about the classical bunch..."There must be a grand piano, Cedric!"

But, although an upright might feel better than most digitals (except the Avant Grand...the V-Piano feels exactly like any other high-end Roland digital), it is still subject to tuning discrepancies. I have no quarrel with the "sound" and "feel" of an acoustic piano, grand or ungrand...but, I do dislike their propensity to drift out of tune, thus requiring maintenance.

Concert halls have their pianos tuned before an important performance...I feel every performance by even the most beginning beginner is important and a piano in proper tune encourages one to play better.

An out of tune piano encourages nothing.

Snazzy

Reminds me of my old Andrew Kohlar upright I tried to sell. Eventually, I eneded up pushing it down the street and giving it to some kids who wanted to learn piano. I am very happy with my Triton Extreme. Sounds great and I can take it to gigs with me. No way will I ever own a piano. Don't get me wrong, I love the instrument and grew up with one. However, today's technology just offers way too many options and convience.