Is there still value in a spinet piano?

[Tom Williams]

 

This picture was posted on FB by a buddy of mine.  My reaction is cross-posted here:

Quote

 

Piano was my first instrument, and I would love to be able to put a 9' Baldwin grand (or even a 6' Young Chang) in my music room.

 

But with modern electronic pianos getting better and cheaper, it's getting difficult to justify transporting and tuning (and tuning, and tuning) upright pianos, particularly spinets. Sad to say, a $250 electronic even sounds better than a typical $2500 upright.

 

[Leroy C]

Funny you mention this, I was just thinking about it recently.  In December, I attended a couple of different holiday parties at the homes of co-workers.  Both had a spinet, and I had the opportunity to play a bit on both.  I kept thinking how much nicer my Rolands play and sound ...  

 

These days, I think you might as well stick to a DP and then move to a decent upright like a Yamaha B3 or U1, and skip the spinet stage in between.

[KuruPrionz]

Take the piano, remove the harp and toss the rest in the dumpster. 

Mount the harp on a nice looking piece of plywood and mount that on your wall. 

Aim a speaker at it and there will be a beautiful ambient sympathetic sound. 

When I was in my early teens I put a brick on the sustain pedal of the crappy upright we had a home, propped the door above the keyboard open and put a small guitar amp up there, aiming at the strings. The amp did not have reverb, now it did. Lush and beautiful!!!! 

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

I learned on a spinet, as did a lot of folks here I bet.  It was one of those things I always figured were perfectly fine and normal until I discovered the internet and learned the spinet was considered to be somewhat on the tacky side.  Or maybe that was just some of the snob appeal the came from Grand owners?   I mean, if you don't have a Grand, what's the point in even playing?  There is a lot of that over on the Piano World forum.

[Tom Williams]

No, Lou, that's a mischaracterization of my point -- I learned on an 1897 player piano that had had the player action removed.  I built my musical ear on the thing.   Then I went to college, played on a 9' Baldwin, and realized that I had missed a lot: many pieces that work on a grand -- say, Sunken Cathedral -- would just have been crap on my Story and Clark upright, and would have been smelly crap on a spinet.  But that's all we had; it's all we could afford.

 

But now, 40+ years later, we have the ability -- for less than the price of a crappy spinet piano -- to provide our students with something that sounds better and never goes out of tune, for as little as $200 US.  Raise the price to about $1000 (or less) and you can provide a hammer touch nearly identical to that $100,000 grand.

 

Is a spinet better than nothing?  Certainly.  But if it costs $3 for a bacon cheeseburger and $6 for a bowl of cold gruel, which would you prefer?

[Tom Williams]

37 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Take the piano, remove the harp and toss the rest in the dumpster. 

Mount the harp on a nice looking piece of plywood and mount that on your wall. 

Aim a speaker at it and there will be a beautiful ambient sympathetic sound. 

When I was in my early teens I put a brick on the sustain pedal of the crappy upright we had a home, propped the door above the keyboard open and put a small guitar amp up there, aiming at the strings. The amp did not have reverb, now it did. Lush and beautiful!!!! 

Ironically, that's the inverse of my plan: I want to get a nice, ornately carved  66" oak upright built about a century ago, take out the music rack and set it as a mantel piece, take out the kick plate and make it into a coffee table, and recycle the side panels into desks.

 

When I do that, I'll send you the harp.  Postage due, of course.

[KuruPrionz]

Just now, Tom Williams said:

Ironically, that's the inverse of my plan: I want to get a nice, ornately carved  66" oak upright built about a century ago, take out the music rack and set it as a mantel piece, take out the kick plate and make it into a coffee table, and recycle the side panels into desks.

 

When I do that, I'll send you the harp.  Postage due, of course.

I had a piano harp from an "electrified" Baldwin spinet. It was huge, heavy and stupid. Sounded good but I got rid of it. 

You may have a metal recycler who will take it for free. Otherwise, hopefully your dump is cheap. Ours was... 😇

[re Pete]

It's still a piano. If in a decent state, fine for beginners or other situations.

 

[bfields]

6 minutes ago, Tom Williams said:

Then I went to college, played on a 9' Baldwin, and realized that I had missed a lot: many pieces that work on a grand -- say, Sunken Cathedral -- would just have been crap on my Story and Clark upright, and would have been smelly crap on a spinet.  But that's all we had; it's all we could afford.

 

But now, 40+ years later, we have the ability -- for less than the price of a crappy spinet piano -- to provide our students with something that sounds better and never goes out of tune, for as little as $200 US.  Raise the price to about $1000 (or less) and you can provide a hammer touch nearly identical to that $100,000 grand.

For that Debussy, though?  I used to love playing that piece at school when I had access to a big grand piano.  Now I'll occassionally try it on something like my PC4, and, meh.  It loses all the fun compared to playing with real strings and dampers.  Something with better string resonance and damper modelling might help, I guess, the pedal on most digital keyboards is a pretty blunt instrument.

 

But I haven't managed to convince myself it's worth the space and the expense yet.  Maybe one of these years....

[TommyRude]

42 minutes ago, Tom Williams said:

When I do that, I'll send you the harp.  Postage due, of course.

Keep the harp.  You can make a harpejii and sell it for big bucks.

[The Real MC]

Spinet vs DP - DP wins every time.  DPs have pretty much killed the spinet market.  With few exceptions, piano stores won't even take one on consignment.

[obxa]

By current production values : Yes.  What's hip?  Crappy, murky, and imperfect.   Take a view of Christian Henson's  pianobook site.    https://www.pianobook.co.uk/instrument/pianos/upright/.     Spin the radio (or spotify) dial.     Most sessions I do, producer or artists often say Grand piano is too piano sounding!!???  

 

I'm in the "better than nothing camp".   I'd hate to gig on one.  But no matter how many electronic thingies and plug ins, always nice to plunk out or check a chord on something that's a real acoustic instrument -warts and all.   I think Miles Davis used to quip  "electric instruments are only great until they turn off the electricity".

 

2 hours ago, Tom Williams said:

I learned on an 1897 player piano that had had the player action removed.  I built my musical ear on the thing.  

 

I felt your pain. 😀   Also brought up on a crappy decommissioned player piano-  which was also tuned down a 1/2 step!!  To this day I still hear pitch that way if I'm not careful.  Finally bought (um, financed) a nice grand.  After 20 years still love it, but takes up half my studio space.   Because of late hours and courtesy to family and neighbors, I end up playing & practicing on a DP most times.  Considering moving it to the LR.    Singer in my big band recently asked if I wanted to "Foster" his lovely Mason & Hamlin conservatory.  Tempting, but It's bigger than an SUV.

 

I've noticed most of my film scoring heroes have those nice Yamaha upright grands, which I'm considering cross-grading to.  But a few also have some charming spinets just to work stuff out.   

 

  Disclaimer:  Guilty of re-purposing  several spinets/uprights that were headed for landfill.  Two for my main church gig and satellite campus, (see below) and a local theater.      If they're beyond hope- they make great, vibey piano shells.   Call it PETU: people for the ethical treatment of uprights.

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

My issue with spinets in general is the crappy actions on them. I have never played one that didn’t feel both loose and slow at the same time. Not sure which I like less - a typical spinet action or the Fatar TP100!

[MathOfInsects]

I have to admit, though, I love the sound of the Hamilton (Baldwin) upright that we got for free, and the kids use for their lessons. It's got a nice bright timbre and tons of character, good and bad.

[MAJUSCULE]

Gimme a real instrument any day of the week over a digital facsimile.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

11 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

My issue with spinets in general is the crappy actions on them. I have never played one that didn’t feel both loose and slow at the same time. Not sure which I like less - a typical spinet action or the Fatar TP100!

That's so funny -- my spinet in my home studio is a mess, incredibly difficult to keep in tune, hardly worth the $75 we paid for it. But I love how fast and breezy the action is, and the bright punch of the sound of the piano when it responds. Makes my blues licks feel like butter. I'd still prefer a Yamaha baby grand in my house, but sometimes I wish I could have my spinet's action on a DP.

2 hours ago, MAJUSCULE said:

Gimme a real instrument any day of the week over a digital facsimile.

100%. I love my Yamaha CP88 (thanks, @Outkaster!), and I actually enjoy playing (digital) piano at gigs for the first time in a long time. But if I could have an acoustic piano, even a spinet, rolled out for me every time I play a crummy club gig or whatever, I would do it every time. It's the feeling of a big block of wood resonating, the feeling of the mechanisms moving when you lean on the pedals, that the digitals can't do. They sound and feel amazing at this point, but even the best reproduce the sound of the resonance without the physical sensation.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

9 minutes ago, Jazz+ said:

Spinets are so small that their metal harp size can only hold a tune for a very short time, perhaps for a single day.

To contrast my last comment: When I was making my solo album during the pandemic, I waited to lay down the piano part for one of the ballads until *immediately* after the piano tuner was finished with my spinet. And even then, every take I did, I could hear the piano going further out of tune as I played. I had to nail it in two or three passes or the edits would have been too obvious, and the tuning would have gone outside the realm of "pleasant chorusing" into "distracting." Not as much of an issue for the more upbeat/aggressive tunes, but for a sensitive, emotional ballad ... stressful!

[Leroy C]

For me: bad DP < bad AP < good DP =< good AP (depending on the music style)

 

Also for me: spinet = bad AP (okay, maybe mediocre AP depending on the spinet)

[MathOfInsects]

So many of the songs I love the most, have audible tuning variances on the piano.

My greatest gripe against DPs, to the extent that I have gripes, is as much about color as it is what happens right after the attack. I love that momentary (microsecond) of instability in the pitch as the waves find each other. The "thunk-NOTE" approach of DPs is nice and reliable, and you can play with detuning layers and resonance, but you never get that initial subtle wrangling of waves into sync. For recordings for other people, I use DP's and play with tuning layers for greater realism. But for my own stuff I'm often just as happy to use an imperfect live piano, as even an  imperfect digital one. 

[KuruPrionz]

On 2/10/2023 at 10:56 AM, MathOfInsects said:

So many of the songs I love the most, have audible tuning variances on the piano.

My greatest gripe against DPs, to the extent that I have gripes, is as much about color as it is what happens right after the attack. I love that momentary (microsecond) of instability in the pitch as the waves find each other. The "thunk-NOTE" approach of DPs is nice and reliable, and you can play with detuning layers and resonance, but you never get that initial subtle wrangling of waves into sync. For recordings for other people, I use DP's and play with tuning layers for greater realism. But for my own stuff I'm often just as happy to use an imperfect live piano, as even an  imperfect digital one. 

This, strings go sharp as they are struck and then settle back into tune as the initial tension the strike provides recedes. 

Bass and guitar both do the same thing, it's a major reason that "guitar" plugins do not sound like guitars. 

[D. Gauss]

certainly value in this one:

[D. Gauss]

Shondra has value, too.  Adam playing a digital piano would suck!

[dsteinschneider]

8 hours ago, D. Gauss said:

Shondra has value, too.  Adam playing a digital piano would suck!

 

Didn't know about this band - thanks for posting!

[D. Gauss]

57 minutes ago, dsteinschneider said:

 

Didn't know about this band - thanks for posting!

best front man currently out there.

[Montunoman 2]

I paid $300 for a used Kawai 110. WAY better than all the old spinets I tried out. If I had the carpentry skills I get old spinet and use it as a shell for a DP. 

[Zydecat]

A bit OT, but spinet related. The piano in my house while growing up was a Wurlitzer spinet, dark mahogany finish on the wood with most of the flat panels covered in some sort of vinyl-type material to match.  I spent hours noodling on that thing, and never saw another one like it.  About 10 or 12 years ago I toured the Sun Records studio in Memphis.  Much to my surprise, near the "x" on the floor where Elvis stood at the microphone, was a spinet exactly like the one I grew up with. A few keys had cigarette burns which the tour guide said were from Jerry Lee's carelessness.  To say I was amazed is a major under statement.