This list represents the opinion of raters at pianoworld, pianostreet and uk-piano.co.uk. The brands listed here have been taken from Larry Fine's tier one list.




Graphs: http://www.opinionpower.com/results.cgi?id=184033134

I leave the interpretations to you.

Best regards,

Jonas

Interesting. Thanks for colating all this info, Jonas.


I'm somewhat surprised that more people have played a Forster than a Baldwin.

jon-nyc,

Thanks for reminding me about Baldwin SF-10. Larry Fine listed this Baldwin model in his tier one list and I have now added the model number to the average list.

You should do a tier II survey next.

I would also be interested in a tier II survey. In doing such a survey, it only seems fair to rate the tier II pianos against their peers, but I am curious as to how the tier II's would stack up against tier I's.

Derick

Very interesting, pianistical! Thank you for taking the effort to create the survey and compile the data.
It was not surprising to me to see the M&H so highly ranked! :3hearts:

It strikes me, though, that there was considerable variability, looking at the distributions for the individual brands in the original survey thread. The mean scores ended up in the 5-6 range simply because there were nearly as many people who disliked a particular piano as there were those who loved it...which is why the piano industry is able to support so many manufacturers of tier one pianos!

Thanks for the efforts. Very revealing.
I second the request for a Tier II poll. That's where most of us would find our instruments.


Except for my 30 year old Baldwin Hamilton. It's in Tier 32.

Hey George - I had a 17 year old Baldwin Hamilton until earlier this year. I kind of liked mine.

Many of the brands have ratings that are very close. I wonder if the differences are statistically significant?

I don't know if this rating has any statistical significance considering that most 'raters' haven't played all of the pianos mentioned.

So, it's a highly 'selective' group of people.

It's like saying: "I like Italy best in Europe"

"I just don't go anywhere else"

norbert

I'd like to see a ranking that combines Tier 1 and Tier 2 pianos.

So instead of getting two 'silos' (and never the two shall meet), you would see some overlap.

It's at the crossover point where things could get very interesting (and probably would have little to do with Fine's ratings)!

It would be tough to figure out precisely, as the data are neither completely independent (different people rating different pianos) nor completely within subjects (the same people rating all pianos). If we had access to the standard deviations as well as the means, it would be easy enough to compute some t-tests ignoring the nonindependence problem, but the resulting probability levels would be biased, and the degree of bias would be determined by how much overlap there was in respondents and how highly correlated their ratings of different pianos were.

The problem I have with any of these [possibly well meant...] *surveys* is that they say something without truly saying anything.

Pianos are not political polls for me but the [often coincidental...] choice of the discerning pianist for himself.

Often being slightly hampered by pocket-change....

Let's not forget that neither Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Mozart or Schubert ever played any of these pianos.

Perhaps its men with less[/b] talent who need to......

norbert

Yeah, but what do they[/b] know about pianos....
Buncha hacks...

(Happy New Year!)

Yeah, and if they were alive today they wouldn't be sitting in front of a piano.

A computer, maybe.

Ever heard Don Dorsey's "Bachbusters?" That's the point he makes (or the argument he uses) for playing Bach on a synthesizer. He feels that Sebastian would have taken advantage of the technology of the day to make his music. We know that Beethoven did.

Actually, I was thinking that these composers wouldn't even be - composers!

They might be spending all their time surfing the 'net!

Maybe reading PW Forum too.

On New Year's Eve, like you and I. Whadda bunch of losers!

Yup.

Just us chickens holding down the fort.

pianistical... if you put the standard deviation into your table, then we can do some statistical analysis... with the caveat that its generalizability is still limited.

I think Walter Carlos and the late, great Dr.Robert Moog made that point some thirty odd years ago.

Although, lets not forget how particular Bach was about instruments and new technology. He rejected the first pianos and would not accept the new instrument, until he had suggested some changes to it. So, whether or not he would have taken advantage of synth technology is up for debate.

Pianistical,

Thanks for taking the time to do this survey. Of course it is a small sample and most of us are unusually preoccupied with piano, but maybe those are the best people to be taking a survey like this.

Anyway, thank you for the time and effort.

Jon,

I feel the same way about 1950's Baldwin Acrosonics - they were little workhorses.

Unlike my 1975 Baldwin Hamilton which is a BIG workhorse!



(Happy New Year, Rich!)

Please don't skip this post simply because it is long and/or has my name attached to it. I've long been interested in a PW piano rating. With pianistica's survey and some other suggestions above, I think I have a survey that makes sense.

I believe the best way to do a comparison among pianos would be to assign a unique ranking to each piano. In other words, if there are ten pianos, only one piano can be assigned a 10, one a 9 and so on. See chart below.

In addition, I think it would also be useful to include three rankings for each piano: a ranking for touch, one for tone, and an "over all" rating. One may really like the tone of a piano, but be so-so on the touch. Nevertheless, the individual may prefer this piano over all the others for reasons only the rater knows.

It would be interesting to see if the piano whose overall average is highest, is also the piano that gets the highest average for touch and tone.

Don't shoot me over my ratings, it is just my opinion and means nothing. It was *NOT* easy to assign a unique ranking to each piano for the 3 categories. I had to go over each column several times to make sure the rating I gave the piano was what I really thought - a lot of pianos that were ties, but I had to make a determination and rate one over the other. In the end, there were some surprises.

The "Total" column is Touch + Tone. The surprise was that some of the pianos I would rather have as indicated in the "Over all" column, did not get the highest Touch + Tone (Total) rating.


Piano--------Touch-----Tone-----Overall-----Total

Bosendorfer---10---------10-------10---------20
Bluthner-------9----------8--------8---------17
Forster--------4----------4--------5----------8
Steingraeber---3----------1--------2----------4
Bechstein------8----------3--------3---------11
Fazioli--------1----------2--------1----------3
Grotrian-------7----------6--------6---------13
M&H------------2----------5--------4----------7
S&S------------6----------9--------9---------15
Baldwin------- 5----------7--------7---------12


I probably just wasted 30 minutes of my time, but I feel that this approach makes a lot of sense; I doubt many will agree...

Derick

Derick, I think your system has some important advantages, primarily that it forces people to make comparisons between pianos rather than allowing them to just give uniformly high or low ratings across all pianos. The resulting data could very well be highly informative.

But the downside is that your system wouldn't easily accommodate the majority of respondents who haven't played all ten brands. If we merely rank the ones we've played, it would be misleading to average raw ranks across respondents. I'm not sure how to fix that without complicated statistics (standardizing ranks within respondents and then averaging the Z-scores) or restricting your survey to those people who have tried all ten.

From Derick's rankings,
Derick, I would guess you've only sampled M&H's that were not made recently. I know they have been criticized in the past for having stiff, heavy actions. However, I have the new CC and its touch is very, very good. Easily the equal of any Bosie that I've tried. I think you would have a different impression if you sat down and played it.

Tavner,

I may very well agree with you if I were sit down and play one that was made recently. All the piano ratings in my chart were based on pianos I played a little over a year and a half ago; and there was no CC back then, or at least I never played one which may be an added variable.

Nevertheless, I hesitated to publish that since I didn't want to get anyone upset over what I thought. Which again, is only meaningful to me. Notice that although the Bechstein tally was higher, I'd still prefer an M&H! That was another "oddity" or seemingly illogical thing that turned up.

When I realized this happened for a couple of pianos, I went over my ratings again. I did change a few but again some surprises popped out. Which I think is a good thing. It shows that choosing a piano isn't all about logic and there are many other things that sway someone one way or the other.

Derick

Monica,

I think when there are pianos in the survey that someone has not tried, they should score them as "0". If there are 10 pianos ranked by 10 people, but one of the respondents only played 9 of the 10, when tallying up the average the total would be divided by 9 rather than 10.

The individual rating 9 of the 10 pianos should only use the numbers 2 thru 10 for the pianos they have played.

Also, you brought up another good point and that is that the number of people who rated a particular piano should be noted as well.

How does that sound?

Derick

Derick, you are correct. I previously wrote that in order for this survey to be accurate, both touch, tone , and overall performance must be rated. Not just rating each make of piano on a scale of 1-9, or nothing if you have never played a certain piano. We need to rate what the ears and fingers are telling us.