This Wm. Knabe player grand piano imparts a timeless elegance to this beautiful Southern Illinois home.
A lot of things go into finding the perfect instrument for your home. Things like your budget, how much space you have, what finish / style you like – these are all important things to consider. Those are some of the more obvious things, but here are some things you may not have considered.
Pianos are like human beings. Even though we stock many models in many different sizes and styles, no two pianos will speak with the exact same voice. Regardless of how precisely a manufacturer builds each of their pianos (and ours are precise down to thousandths-of-an-inch) each one will sound, play, and feel just a little bit different. Each and every instrument in our store is a true one-of-a-kind.
The Size
It’s one of the most important things – the size. There are basically two types of pianos available these days – upright pianos and grand pianos. Upright pianos have their strings arranged in a vertical fashion, and take up a minimum of floor space. Grand pianos have their strings arranged in a horizontal fashion, take up more space, yet have a unique and striking appearance.
Virtually all upright pianos take up the same footprint, more or less. They are differentiated by being available in a number of different heights, generally from 36″ to 52″. Buying a taller piano means a larger soundboard (greater resonance and power) and larger bass strings (greater tonal strength in bass region). For the most part, the mid-range and treble strings on all uprights do not vary greatly in length between small and large pianos. They do however benefit from larger soundboard area in taller pianos.
Grand pianos vary in size considerably more so than uprights. While they are typically all the same width (from one end of the keyboard to the other) and the same height, they vary considerably in length. The smallest grand pianos we stock come in between 4′ 8″ to 5′ in length, with the largest ones topping out just over 9′ in length. The same principle that applies to vertical pianos applies to grands; the larger they are, the longer your bass strings are, and the more soundboard area you have. The soundboard in effect serves to amplify the sound of the strings, much like a speaker cone amplifies tiny vibrations in its core.
The Sound
The way we describe how a piano sounds, apart from it being loud or soft, is the instrument’s tone. Some instruments speak with what we call a brighter tone, and some speak with a warmer tone. A bright piano has a tone with a lot of clear upper harmonics present. A warm piano has a tone with a less upper harmonic development, and more fundamental tone. The sound that you hear from the piano here in the store could be very different once you get the instrument home. Take into consideration the size of your room, the flooring (carpet, wood, tile, etc), the type of ceiling (drop, flat, arched, high, etc).
The flooring material has a big impact on the sound. Carpet tends to absorb sound, and especially higher frequencies.
- A piano that sounds pleasantly warm in our store (concrete slab floor with very thin carpet) and perfectly balanced for a hard thin floor will sound very dull in a small room with thicker carpet. You’d want to select a brighter sounding piano to compensate for the loss of volume.
- If you have a room with wood or tile flooring, these hard surfaces reflect and amplify sound, so selecting an instrument that sound very warm and mellow in our showroom would likely experience a certain amount of “bloom” in your ideal piano room.
The Touch
A view inside a grand piano’s action.
You can also describe a piano by how it feels to play it, or how the action responds. The “action” is a term we use to describe the thousands of parts inside a piano that move to produce sound when you play a key. Different manufacturers sometimes use slightly different types of actions, but in general they all function in the same way to do the same thing. Some pianos have a feeling that could be described as heavy, while other pianos could be described as light. For people who play with a lot of force, a heavier action will help to compensate for that. For people who play more delicately, that heavy touch might be too much.
Given the enormous number of parts and their ability to be easily manipulated by a skilled piano technician, the sound and feel of any piano can be modified to a great degree. Fear not, if you’ve found the piano of your dreams but it’s not quite perfect yet, it can be!
The Money
While it’s not always the most important thing, it definitely does make a piano into a possibility. You’ll be glad to know that we’ve made it easy to shop for instruments. At any given time, nearly all of our instruments have price cards that give genuine, honest information about what an instrument will cost you.
We always list the MSRP, what the manufacturer suggest we should sell an instrument for, and then our sale price. This sale price is based upon our principal of selling: selling a large number of instruments at low price, giving a fantastic deal to the customer, no questions asked. In fact, most of our sale prices are below the MAP price (minimum advertised price, set by the manufacturer), and as such, we’re unable to advertise those prices online.
Determining the bottom line involves just a few things. Do you have a trade in you’re interested in applying toward the instrument? We can always give estimates, but the more information you can give us about your instrument, the better our price can be. We have to take into account what it will cost us to get reconditioned and in perfect playing shape. Having the serial number so we can estimate its age also helps.
We’re committed to making the purchase of a new instrument as easy and affordable as possible. That’s why we offer several purchase plan options.
- Cash – If you’d like, we always welcome cash in full, but not everyone wants to do that.
- 90-Day Same-as-Cash – If you have the cash, but don’t want to give it up all at once, we offer several in-store 90-day same-as-cash options. Pay 1/4 of the instrument as a downpayment, with the remain 3/4 due after 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days.
- Financing – For those who prefer to split things up over a longer term, we offer conventional financing, allowing the payment of an instrument to be split up in monthly payments, terms of anywhere between 24 to 120 months. The interest is what we call “simple”, meaning it’s split up over the life of the term, for as long as it takes to pay it off. If you choose to finance for 72 months for instance, but pay it off in 48 months, you only pay 48 months worth of interest.
- Rent-to-Own – Still not sure if you’re ready to commit to an instrument? Our rent-to-own program is the perfect option. Enjoy the ability to get a piano right away for a low monthly rental payment (beginning at $45, plus cartage), with the option to purchase! If after a year’s worth of rental, you decide that you’d like to make a purchase, you can use 60% of your rent toward the purchase of a pre-owned instrument, or 100% of your rent toward the purchase of a new instrument.