Young Chang vs. Samick "brands"
michelle
playing what seems like hundreds of piano's, the Young Chang G-157 seemed to
be the best of the lot within our budget. Unfortunately, I have no
confidence in the local Young Chang dealer, getting honest info out of them
is like pulling teeth. Any input on the following questions would be
appreciated.
1) Are the new Young Chang 5'2" (which have TG-157 stamped on the plate)
made in Korea or China?
2) Is Young Chang having problems? (no web site, recently moved HQ, moving
production to china??)
3) Any thoughts on the Samick brands, specifically Kohler and Wurlitzer?
(for some reason the Wurlizter sounded alot better to me, but they should be
the same piano, correct?)
4) Any additional thoughts or comments on baby grands of this size and price
segment would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Dan
Frank Weston
Dan,
If you're shopping for furniture, any 5' 2" grand will do, preferably the
cheaper the better. If you actually want a musical instrument and it has to
be a grand, start looking in the 5' 8" size range. In the 5' 8" plus size
range, a quality piano will most likely blow your budget, but what would you
rather have? A musical instrument worthy of use by a generation or two or
three, or a cute piano shaped object that your children will ultimately pay
someone to haul to the dump?
For new pianos look at Petrof, Charles Walter, Yamaha, Kawai, and possibly
Young Chang. For used, consider rebuilt Steinway, Knabe or Mason and
Hamlin. A good, larger grand may be closer to what you can afford than you
think.
Frank Weston
Rick Clark
> For used, consider rebuilt Steinway, Knabe or Mason and
>Hamlin.
Don't forget the turn-of-the-century Mighty 6'2" APOLLO!!!!!!!
(Sorry to steal your material, Isaac. Welcome back, Frank)
Rick
Don
>We are looking at baby grands in the 5' 2-3" range for our home. After
>playing what seems like hundreds of piano's, the Young Chang G-157 seemed to
>be the best of the lot within our budget. Unfortunately, I have no
>confidence in the local Young Chang dealer, getting honest info out of them
>is like pulling teeth. Any input on the following questions would be
>appreciated.
>
Young Change, for the most part, sucks. So does Samick.
ONLY a personal opinion...backed up by over 30 YEARS of performing
experience and 4 years on 3 YC crappy pianos.
But that is JUST my opinion. Results may vary due to weather
conditions or the commision of the salesman.
Sincerely,
Don in Dallas
>1) Are the new Young Chang 5'2" (which have TG-157 stamped on the plate)
>made in Korea or China?
Doesn't matter...they both make wonderful peices of furniture.
>2) Is Young Chang having problems? (no web site, recently moved HQ, moving
>production to china??)
Is YC having problems...compaired to what?
>3) Any thoughts on the Samick brands, specifically Kohler and Wurlitzer?
>(for some reason the Wurlizter sounded alot better to me, but they should be
>the same piano, correct?)
You will get a better deal on a used grand.
>4) Any additional thoughts or comments on baby grands of this size and price
>segment would be appreciated!
Yes...don't buy brand new. Get one a few years old and you can get a
much better piano for the money.
D*
Recently described as:
"piano-bar-church music director-conductor-funeral pianist."
------------------------------------------------------------
www.calldon.com/shadow.htm
Remembering Shadow
July 1984 - November 13, 1997
A Tribute To The Sweetest, Most Perfect Dog In Heaven
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue....
Al Stevens
clubs: The YC is about as pretty as the Samick. Other than that, there is no
difference. They are cheap, which is why you often see them in hotel lobbies
and clubs. They are both inadequate musical instruments. They don't feel
right, sound right, or hold a tune for very long. Take your budget and buy a
used Yamaha or Kawai of about 6'. Pay an unbiased technician to evaluate the
piano before you buy it.
Don
As one who has to actually PLAY on the things after the tone-deaf
managers make the purchase, allow me to add a loud "AMEN!!!"
amoli...@visi-dot-com.com
Frank Weston <kla...@annap.infi.net> wrote:
>Dan,
>
>If you're shopping for furniture, any 5' 2" grand will do, preferably the
>cheaper the better. If you actually want a musical instrument and it has to
>be a grand, start looking in the 5' 8" size range. In the 5' 8" plus size
>range, a quality piano will most likely blow your budget, but what would you
>rather have? A musical instrument worthy of use by a generation or two or
>three, or a cute piano shaped object that your children will ultimately pay
>someone to haul to the dump?
What I have understood this to mean in the past isn't quite so
bad as it sounds. Apparently, a 5' 2" horizontal piano won't sound any
better than a decent upright, and will tend to cost quite a lot more.
For any given Brand X, the 5' 2" grand will cost some number of thousands
of dollars more than the 48"-52" vertical in the Brand X lineup.
For those thousands of dollars you get:
1) furniture value. The thing is gonna look neat in your living room.
2) a grand piano action, which will play differently than the
48"-52" vertical, and perhaps you will find it better.
This may NOT be what Frank means, but it's part of what at least some
people mean when they say things of the sort Frank just did.
Andrew
Frank Weston
amoli...@visi-dot-com.com wrote
> For those thousands of dollars you get:
>
> 1) furniture value. The thing is gonna look neat in your living room.
Yes, it will definitely make a statement. It will say "My owner has more
money than brains."
Frank Weston
amoli...@visi-dot-com.com
All my friends already know this! Of course, it's not because I
have a lot of money..
I've missed you, this newsgroup was getting way to alkaline.
>Frank Weston
P.S. In case it's not clear to everyone, which it's probably not, I
respect Frank's opinions on pretty much anything piano related, and don't
presume to outright contradict a word he says.
MidiOpera Co.
> Don wrote:
> > As one who has to actually PLAY on the things after the tone-deaf
> > managers make the purchase, allow me to add a loud "AMEN!!!"
>
> yeh - me too.
Ditto here....5'2" Samuck, less than 2 years old which is better than I
expected but hardly good. I give it another year in Florida before it's
junk because the restaurant owners don't want to pay to maintain it. If
they don't do something during the month of August when the restaurant
is closed and the AC is off, the piano will suffer by the time they
reopen.
> I mean, you don't expect a brand new Hyundai to drive like
> a brand new Beemer -- but do you take the Hyundai back to the
> dealer with every little complaint, or do you let it ride,
> a bit?
Main problem I see is that the initial setup is never adaquate from
these cheapo dealers that sell the crap, so you never have an idea of
where the piano's optimum is.
I have 2 solutions:
1. A contract that pays enough for me to afford some maintainence by a
pro (not the store).
2. Tell the store everytime the piano has a real problem not one of
maintainence.....you are the only one who knows and to whom it makes a
difference.
Ain't no glamour in playing a Sam.
RS
--
Robert Steinberg
MidiOpera Co.
http://www.evcom.net/~midiopra/
http://www.tcol.net/~midiopra/
Rick Clark
Anyone care to answer Dan's question of letting him know which new
pianos in that price range are any better?
I find my own feeling toward them depends on what pianos I have worked
on that day. On a day I have been dealing with the common low-end
American pianos from the mid-late 20th century like Aeolian, Kimball,
etc (which market niche has been now filled by Korean pianos) these
Korean pianos look pretty good. Best low-end cheapass pianos ever
built, I'd say. Sort of like they want to be Yamaha, but don't exactly
know what they are doing. But they're a heckuva lot closer to being a
real piano than a Kimball Whitney (for instance).
On the days my work is dominated by high quality pianos of America,
Europe, or Japan, I want to say why invest in that low-end cheapass
Korean stuff with all the inherent deficiencies?? Save up a little
more and get something that will perform like a good musical
instrument and have some staying power in this world! If you wouldn't
buy a Yugo, why buy a cheapass piano? You sacrifice quality of
materials and workmanship. Think about what that means. Quality of
materials and workmanship. What do you think happens when you build
an extremely complex and delicate machine sacrificing the quality of
materials and workmanship......? Maybe it don't work right or last
well?
On a mixed day, I just remember that old economic law: Low price=more
sales. Can't win a fight against human nature. The more people own a
piano, the better for all of us. If 10 low-end cheapass pianos
malfunction, perhaps 1 owner will notice and care enough to do
something about it, and I can keep putting bread on the table.
And one more thing: when it comes to true musical creativity, I have
heard a lot of young people from families of scant means do some
pretty amazing musical things on the worst cheapass castoff
instruments you can imagine. They didn't realize the instrument was
"bad"- they just made some great music on it. Some of the world's
greatest musical talent was nurtured on malfunctioning, cheapass
instruments, because that's what they had. I wouldn't want to see that
dynamic go away.
Rick Clark
Merlin Zener
>
> "Al Stevens" <alst...@midifitz.com> wrote:
>
> >From the perspective of a piano player (IANAT) who has played both brands in
> >clubs: The YC is about as pretty as the Samick. Other than that, there is no
> >difference. They are cheap, which is why you often see them in hotel lobbies
> >and clubs. They are both inadequate musical instruments. They don't feel
> >right, sound right, or hold a tune for very long. Take your budget and buy a
> >used Yamaha or Kawai of about 6'. Pay an unbiased technician to evaluate the
> >piano before you buy it.
> >
> >
> managers make the purchase, allow me to add a loud "AMEN!!!"
>
yeh - me too.
Any of you guys had anything to do with Korean made Beales?
I'm playing a fairly new one now - I don't like it much -
the regulation is all over the place, it holds tune for about
two days, the dampers don't damp properly...
Thing is, I don't really know where to draw the line between
"this is a cheap piano, you get what you get" and "this isn't
right, it should be fixed under warranty"
I mean, you don't expect a brand new Hyundai to drive like
a brand new Beemer -- but do you take the Hyundai back to the
dealer with every little complaint, or do you let it ride,
a bit?
I'd appreciate your comments...
--
Merlin Zener mailto:mer...@ion.com.au
Piano and Synthesizer http://www.ion.com.au/~merlin
"No-one ever went blind from looking on the bright side of life"
John S. Gray
(1) the bearing is good. Have it checked.
(2) the dealer prep is thourough, by somebody who knows what he is doing.
JG
John S. Gray
I'll add that I tuned this most abysmal squat Aeolian-clone console in a
suburban bungalow. I later found out that it was the piano that Steven
Clarke started out with...!
JG
Mark
experienced some of the problems you mention: dampers not dampening, tuning
stablility. They did fix the damper problem and the technician charged to
the warranty somehow through the dealer (Steinway dealer in Seattle). The
jury's out on the tuning stability. It's still in the first year, I've had
it tuned 2x now. The second time the pitch needed raising, so it slipped
pretty quickly.
All in all though I'm happy with it. The tone is decent, and I'm able to
practice once again. It's been a decent piano. Fortunately I bought through
a reputable dealer that stands by their sale, so I've gotten the support
needed.
Getting to your questions: anything that does not work like it should (like
bad dampers or serious tuning stability problems) I would insist they fix
under the warranty. Speaking to your analogy, while you don't expect a
Hyundai to drive like a beemer, you should expect it to function like a car.
Take care,
Mark
Merlin Zener wrote in message <379CA93C...@ion.com.au>...
dw...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> I'll add that I tuned this most abysmal squat Aeolian-clone console in a
> suburban bungalow.
Has a funny ring in Europe, where Aeolian faded from the scene in 1932,
leaving a great moraine of solid, well-made and often very musical Webers
and Stecks, both uprights and grands, made at the factory just by Hayes
station west of London (the 1908 block is still standing), and some
beautiful, even historically significant Stecks made at the former Ernst
Munck plant at Gotha in Germany. One of the best little uprights they
made, certainly the best value, was a shrunken rescaled Steck with the
fallboard marked "Aeolian".
Their sales point and concert hall, Aeolian Hall in Bond Street, which
already had sound broadcasting lines, was used by the BBC as a studio
from 1936 and taken over almost entirely by them in 1938, closing only in
1980. A living relic is the Aeolian Quartet who named themselves after
the hall where they played so often.
The sorry years of Aeolian-American after 1934 were never experienced
here.
According to an article by Rex Lawson in the latest "Pianola Journal",
the name Aeolian (from Aeolian harp, from a Greek tribe) was first given
to a 46-note roll-playing reed organ which started production in December
1884 in Brooklyn, its makers then being called the Mechanical Orguinette
Co.
===
| \
| \ dwi...@cix.compulink.co.uk
| [] D Dan Wilson (Friends of the Pianola Institute, London)
| / antispam: remove 2 if emailing
| /
===
Rick Clark
Don't know if you know the history here in the U.S., but during the
really low point Aeolian was cranking out little spinets and consoles
with every name *but* Aeolian on them. They had hit on a magic
formula: sell them for peanuts but put a "famous" name on the
fallboard. People bought them in droves, thinking "I've heard of that
company", not realizing it was just generic crap, unrelated to the
original company. Having so many different stencils gave the company
another edge: they could sell pianos through every dealer, yet give
each one a territorial exclusive on a "name brand" (wink, wink).
Ironically, during some of the worst quality years of Aeolian, the
company was owned by Peter perez, the same man who was a president of
Steinway & Sons.
Most of them were quite defective from conception to execution-
defective bridge notching, backposts separating from the frame, etc.
They weren't the only US manufacturer making such junk, but I believe
they were certainly the biggest. During the very worst years they were
coming out of Memphis, Tennessee, and it was obvious the workforce was
completely unskilled, and everything else cheapened to the bone.
About those Aeolian windharps: I've been looking for one of them for a
number of years.......
Rick Clark
dw...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> Most of them were quite defective from conception to execution-
> defective bridge notching, backposts separating from the frame, etc.
> They weren't the only US manufacturer making such junk, but I believe
> they were certainly the biggest. During the very worst years they were
> coming out of Memphis, Tennessee, and it was obvious the workforce was
> completely unskilled, and everything else cheapened to the bone.
A few of their "revived" player piano models were tried in England in the
late 1960s. I remember taking an interest in one because it was so
obviously horrible and asking if I could try a roll on it.
The salesman said: "It won't play, I'm afraid. Are you knowledgeable
about these things, then ? We've got another three in the store and none
of them work."
I tried a roll but there was no suction, only a hollow blowing noise
underneath. I recognised this without looking as unseasoned wood warping
in a climate more humid than where the thing was built. All the wooden
parts would have to be removed, seasoned for a few months and then planed
true. And even then you had a player where you couldn't control the
dynamics properly. I declined to help, but I remember being sorry for
people who knew so little about pianos that they could end up with such a
total disaster. A case of sack the old guy who thinks he knows so much
and get in some cheapo youngsters who'll save the day with some bright
ideas. Not.
Who made the 1960s Ivers and Pond console player ? There's one in the
Pianola Shop, Brighton (or was) and it's got remarkable tone for such a
midget, plus very traditional player innards.
Rick Clark
>Who made the 1960s Ivers and Pond console player ? There's one in the
>Pianola Shop, Brighton (or was) and it's got remarkable tone for such a
>midget, plus very traditional player innards.
My resources say this, too was Aeolian Memphis.
As far as unseasoned wood problems... I have seen a lot of that.
"True" dimensions were hard to find among those cheapies. I believe I
recall a lot of Kohler & Campbells and others similar from that era
having backposts/pinblocks separating from the frame assembly for that
reason. Here, we run bolts all the through the piano and try to snug
them back together.
I see "green" wood problems even today- tending to be warping or
twisting keys in some of the new Asian-made pianos. Not Japan or
Korea, but Indonesia, China. That kind of piano.
Rick Clark
dw...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> >Who made the 1960s Ivers and Pond console player ? There's one in the
> >Pianola Shop, Brighton (or was) and it's got remarkable tone for such
> >a midget, plus very traditional player innards.
and Rick Clark replied:
> My resources say this, too was Aeolian Memphis.
How strange ! I don't think they ever got better, so this must have been
made in earlier revival days before they cleared the workshop of
wrinklies with a burp gun.
