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If you were rating pianos, based on quality of construction, performance, and image, how would your ratings differ from Larry Fine's Current Ratings?

Steve, got your kevlar vest on? Actually, this is a great question. Can't wait to hear Turandot's answer.

Well I certainly would not rate anything on image.
Image can be manufactured easier than a well built piano.
All you need is advertising and constant plugging.

If it were up to me pianos would be simply be rated by price.
What is better to one may not be better to another.

Most people can't tell the difference anyways so they purchase what they have been led to believe. And sometimes its a salesman or book that led them to that conclusion.

Well said, Rod.

Well I'd certainly put Shigeru Kawai in the top tier. But I also think my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world and my cats are the cutest
So I suppose getting past personal biases would be challenge number 1.
I think Larry's book does a really good job of this.
It would be nice to see Yamaha's S series included in the ratings. I've played a number of these pianos and think they are easily on par with the very best.

You just got extra Husband points. Be sure to leave this post up where your wife will happen to see it.

In addition to Fine's criteria, I'd rate pianos by ease of tuning. If a piano is difficult to tune, it's defective IMHO. The customer may never know it, except they wonder why it's difficult to keep the same tech coming back, or they wonder why the tunings never hold. If a piano is a bear to tune, some of us tag it "don't tune again".

Example - one of my old customers from Chicago emailed me last month. He has a piano highly regarded on this list, but it's a pain to tune. The pins are too tight, too skinny, too flexible, and take forever to properly set. It used to take me almost 2 hours to tune it. Since I moved away 5 years ago, he's tried two different tuners, and neither one could tune the piano to his satisfaction. He wanted a recommendation for a "good" tuner. What he needed was a "good" tuner who is willing to fight with the pins till they were properly set.

We shouldn't have to fight with tuning pins.

It would be useful to rate pianos on ease of tuning or more generally ease of service.

So then a certain Chinese piano beginning with H must be Tier 1 at least according to plugging points.

Just for you Nancy.

I kind of see it Rod's way. I suppose image in this case is mostly pedigree based on tradition. That's certainly not to be dismissed, but I don't think it should have automatic weighting.

I'd do away with the ratings tables completely. I'd simply list pianos in alphabetical order under three categories.

Premium products from prestige makers

Proven products from established makers

Newer lines and models from emerging markets

The last list would include all products made in China and Indonesia whether they had Yamaha, Irmler, Kawai, or George Steck on the fallboard.

Rated groupings lead shoppers to oversimplify what is anything but simple...the choice of a piano. Doing away with the tables would encourage shoppers to do their own homework with their fingers and ears first.

All the nitty gritty stuff can be listed in the information available under each 'maker's' name. That would include negative stuff like Bob is talking about (if it's a widespread problem that is documented), and positive stuff if Mr. Fine is inclined to do so based on available data and/or personal opinion.

This approach would lead shoppers to check out pianos available before making a short list based only on rough quality groupings in a publication. In my book that's the way to go. When you find something you like, you reference Mr. Fine's excellent commentary on a company's history and tendencies. I've always appreciated that text information far more than ratings tables.

If the ratings tables (and the relative quality they imply) are to stay, I'd like to see some cracks in the glass ceiling between performance grade and consumer grade. I doubt if the distinction between hand-built and not hand-built is worth the cost of a bold line of division at this point. I'd be happier with a Yamaha C than with many of the lesser performance grade pianos, but that's just personal opinion.

I agree that it would be best if piano shoppers used their ears and fingers to evaluate pianos, but that's just not the way the world works. There is value in providing such a service because there's so much misinformation out there and there's much that only a technician would be able to discern. Perhaps it would be best if we could all have a concert level tech accompany us on our piano shopping forays, but again the world just doesn't work that way.

The problem with a source like the buyer's guide is that it tries to codify personal opinions into generalizations about brands. I once compared a 7' George Steck (in fancy mahogany) with a RX6 (at 3x the price of the Steck). I know the Steck had been prepped by a good tech, but it lacked punch and depth of tone and the action felt funny. The RX6 was just a nice instrument, but it paled compared to the Shigeru Kawai SK7 in the same room. I have clear opinions of these 3 pianos but I wouldn't want to take these opinions as indicative of how those brands would typically compare. For that you need the network of techs that Larry has developed. The problem with such a network is its a collection of individual opinions. Still at some point such a collection takes on value.

The only other fair way to provide such a service would be to take the Consumer Reports approach. Purchase pianos from dealers at retail and test them. Something tells me such a business model wouldn't be workable. Al this tells me that what has already been created is doing pretty well. I'm guessing Steve's post is asking for ways to improve what they do and I applaud the effort. Good luck.

Only one person has answered the question in the OP (which was using the present rating system, what changes would you make in the ratings). And all they did was recommend that the piano they owned should be tier 1.

Uh.......Steve, this might not answer your question as you intended, and perhaps I am very naive, but....

I kinda like the way you are doing it now.

Maybe that is because I pretty much always agree with the way things fall.

I know ratings systems like this will never be perfect or satisfy everyone but - works for me.

But what do I know??

I always liked you.

Now I know why!

I guess I would rate the pianos on how well they played and sounded. A friend of mine who is a piano tech says he finds creams and lemons within the same respected brands, including Steinway.

I've played some very nice pianos (from baby grands to concert grands) within the Steinway, Baldwin, Yamaha, and Kawai brands and I've played some very bad pianos within these brands as well. The Yamahas tended to be a little more consistent (yes, they're most all bright, ha) but you just can't beat the Baldwin and especially Steinway concert grands when they're been well maintained. You can just feel the power at your fingertips.

I don't feel like I've played enough new examples of most of the tier 1,2,3 brands to say unequivocally that any one brand is incorrectly ranked in a definitive way. Exemplary prep can make a tier two instrument perform as well or better than some tier one pianos, though it isn't reflected in the chart.

Although this wasn't your question, I'm with Turandot regarding the best "consumer grade" pianos being rated lower due to mass-production. I know it's explained, but so many folks think the tier structure is an absolute. How about the old rating system with 1-5 stars for various criteria for each make?

I played two 6+ foot tier 2 grands at a very prestigious dealer, which happen to be some of the "darlings" of the forum that were, frankly, something of a disappointment--not comfortable naming names until I've played more of them, though.

Glad to have this thread, and in fact even just that LINK!!
I'd looked a few times for that listing lately, and hadn't found it.

Besides being a little unhappy that NY Steinway isn't in the highest ranking, since I have one (although I do happen to like Hamburgs better, which I always assumed was just a preference rather than a difference in quality), I'm surprised that Petrof is quite as high as it is. I just went shopping this month to replace our "2nd piano" (a little Yamaha) and checked out a number of Petrofs very closely, since 'on paper' it seemed to be my kind of piano -- and didn't like any of them as much as I liked the Kawai GE series (not to mention the RX).

I know that Larry Fine and I are talking about different things. He's talking quality, I'm just talking what I like.

Best post, no matter what else there might be on here.

I would DEFINITELY put the Kawai RX and the Yamaha C grands in the "Good Quality Performance" category. That's what many of these pianos do during their lives: serving in practice rooms and quite a few performance locations. Day after day, and holding up quite well. I think they are performance level.

Yes I am kinda surprised that Yamaha isn't up on the good quality side. Certainly is a fine piano in my mind.

Yamaha certainly doesn't vary as much from model to model as some of the other good brands do. They may not be the best when comparing one particular piano to the best of another brand but from what I've heard from my piano tech friends, they definitely are consistently good pianos overall.