The Spring 2012 issue of Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer is now online at www.PianoBuyer.com . The print version will be available in about ten days.

In addition to the usual articles, brand profiles, and prices, this issue contains three feature articles: a photo essay by Martha Taylor on "Upright Cabinet Styles in American Piano Manufacturing, 1880-1930," a review by Owen Lovell on "The New Feurich Pianos," and an article by Russ Vitt on "Moving the Family Piano."

I am always looking for writers, reviewers, and suggestions of topics to write about; and for more Piano-Buying Stories (see website). Contact me if you have ideas.

Larry Fine

For those who don't know, Owen Lovell is our very own Terminaldegree.

I did a quick skim of the latest edition of the "Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer", online version, and found it very informative and interesting.

Thanks for posting!

Rick

Larry,

Nice to see the new edition out.

There are a few items in the product/ pricing that is incorrect.

First Schulze Pollmann raised their prices to us 30 to 40% on verticals!!!! The Piano Buyer pricing isn't even close to the current reality of the pricing. I believe their new pricing went into effect the end of 2011.

Second the Young Chang section does not include the Korean Young Chang product. Young Chang is still manufacturing YP product in Korea and this is not reflected in the book. There are also a great many Korean non YP Young Chang pianos on dealer floors and in Young Changs's warehouses that now have no rating in the book. I think this could be confusing to consumers considering purchase of those pianos.

Glenn,

Larry gets all of his product information straight from the manufacturer or distributor. While typos. are always possible, more often these things are as a result of the source really not taking this publication seriously.

At least this has been the norm. in the past when these mistakes have happened.

Also, thanks for the guidance the other day. I appreciated your Los Angelos help.

Larry,

On your Hailun profile page you describe a full warranty:

"Warranty: 15 years, parts and labor, transferable to future owners within the warranty period."

Hailun’s warranty is limited and only fully transfers to the first purchaser from the original owner, not all future or successive owners within the warranty period:

"When you decide to sell your Hailun piano, the limited full fifteen year warranty is transferable to the purchaser from the original owner."


Mike

Dear Mike,

See my post above yours.

Rich,

"Dear Mike"? No need to be so formal between, er, friends.

No excuses now, though. He might want to change it. It's probably time. It's been in a number of issues, since fall of 2009.

Mike

That article on Upright pianos is really informative.
Thanks, Larry, for including it this time.

Glenn:

I contact each manufacturer or distributor twice a year to update price and other information. The company that distributes Schulze Pollmann generally is either non-responsive or says that nothing has changed. This time they were non-responsive. Although I go to great lengths to obtain accurate information, there is only so much I can do, given that I have 60 or more brands to worry about and only a short time after the NAMM show to put out a 300-page publication. If you believe that the distributor should care enough to send me up-to-date information, I suggest you contact them and let them know that it matters to you.

As for Young Chang, they tell me that the YP models are only being made now under the Albert Weber name.

It's always a problem, when models change, to know how long to continue to run information about the older models, given that for some time there will continue to be older models on the sales floor. I usually take my cues about this from the manufacturer or distributor, as they are in the best position to know how much inventory is out there and what their dealers will want me to print. In this case, a decision was made by Young Chang at the highest level to make a clean break from the older models. They gave me price information only for the new models, and asked me to mention the older ones only minimally. I do mention the older models in the brand profile, and you can send customers to the Archive section of the Piano Buyer website to look up ratings in past issues.

Larry Fine

The distributors always have an opportunity to check my profiles for accuracy before publication, and the Hailun distributor has never asked me to change this. I will check on it and make the change if appropriate. Thanks for alerting me.

Larry Fine

Larry & all, great work again!

Once the new edition is out, it seems not possible to get the old pricing information. The searchable database only has the latest data, and the pricing pages disappeared, e.g. http://www.pianobuyer.com/fall11/195.html This is probably intentional, but is there any way (like in some kind of archive) to get at the old data for comparison purposes?

I was also wondering about the Young Chang YP/PG grands. Thanks for the explanation.

I'm seriously considering a Hailun 198. I see that its SMP received a 30% raise from around $22K to $28K+. Wow! (Or did I mis-remember the fall-11 price? Can't verify it.) If this increase is real, when will buyers expect to see such a change at the dealers?

If SP did not respond I would think it would be responsible to note when you got your price.. No offense but if you are making a publication like this it seems like you might have do do a better job gathering the info -- It seems like reaching out a couple of times is not working-- If they do not respond that hardly makes it right to put serious errors in the book...

Wow, Wound Up...you make it sound so easy.

Thanks, Larry.


Mike

As someone who loves many kinds of case styling I enjoyed the article on Upright Cabinet Styles and the Piano as Art pictures.

I would like to say "thanks" to Larry Fine and his contributors for an invaluable resource.

Bose eric, I think it would be easy to note the last time you received info. Ie: you would note on the few that didn't update when the info was from. I didn't mean to be so critical