Are you sure it's a baby grand and not a boudoir grand? Baby grands are about three feet long, boudoirs about four and a half I think. That's enough to make a huge difference in the sound.

Hm... I'm kinda sure it's a baby grand... at least according to my parents, who bought the piano for me. It's about 160cm long, I vaguely remember.

EDIT: My piano costs £9971, not £6500.

Has anyone heard of Cristofori brand? I was thinking of their grand piano as my instrument after Grade 8 as it's quite affordable.

For S$10395 (~US $6100), I could get a C165 (165cm) long grand piano but I am not sure of their quality and sound. It's a "Singapore homegrown" brand with 10-year warranty. Anyone tried one before? A Yamaha Grand is out-of-reach for my budget and needless to say the better ones

Wonderful touch, good dynamic range, more than five feet long and cost nearly £10,000? Doesn't sound like any baby grand I've every met.

Like your signature, by the way

Worth trying to find a good second hand. I have a CVP 305 which is great and even links direct to the internet for downloads. They can be bought new a lot cheaper if you shop around. Try contacting www.whitleybayorgans.co.uk as they do great deals on 2nd hand and are good on part exchange too. The 300 series are the newest ones, but if you only want it for the piano facilities rather than the keyboard side of things (different voices and styles) then you could look at a 2nd hand cvp 92 and upwards. After the 90 series came the 100 series, then the 200 series and finally the latest are the 300 series. You can also get the CLP series, but I don't know much about these models. Hope this helps a bit. I know how you feel, as I'm in a dilemna myself about changing my acoustic piano. Not sure which to go for.

Schiedmayer pianos are quite unique. I can't really remember what's special about mine, but I guess the sound range I get from it justifies the cost.

Thanks SF.

That's fine as far as tone is concerned, however the touch of a grand piano (including baby grands) is different to an upright. The mechanism by which the hammer hits the strings and is released is fundamentally different.

This makes a difference to how the piano plays. For example, when playing a repeated note on a grand piano, the key does not have to be fully raised in order to play it again. On an upright the key must be fully raised. The result is that you can play more "within the keys" on a grand piano.

For this reason alone, if I had room I would choose a grand over an upright. Yes okay I would go for the largest one I could fit into my house for reasons such as tone, but a baby grand would be preferable in my opinion.

However, having said that I'm constrained to upright pianos due to space considerations.

SO SORRY ABOUT THE EMPTY POSTING. I HIT THE WRONG BUTTON BEFORE I'D WRITTEN MY REPLY

Anyway, I totally agree with the last posting regarding the touch of the grands rather than the tone. I would rather my pupils have the experience of playing on a Grand once a week for the action, rather than worry too much about the length of the strings. After all, in the home we don't need as much power (neighbours might complain anyway ).

Interested to read this thread - even though it spans a rather long period of time.

I've just bought myself a Moutrie 186 ( 6ft ish) grand from Music box pianos Manchester, having spent several weeks trying out different pianos in various locations. I was very much constrained by budget, my absolute top whack being £3500, including the trade in on my Marshall & Rose upright - now incidentally at Music Box pianos if anyone wants a really nice upright for not a lot..
The secondhand ones I looked at were: a smallish Broadwood, quite nice but sadly sold, a Gors & Kallman which turned out to have a cracked soundboard , 2 Welmars which could have been nice but were way overpriced. I also tried quite a few new baby grands: Reid Sohn - no bass response, and my piano technician tells me that there is plastic in the action, two sizes of Waldstein, which I didn't like - the bass response again was not as good as my Marshall & Rose upright, two sizes of Weber, again, I was not impressed with the bass response.
I did like the Wendl & Lung 161, but the price was over budget at almost £7000.

So I went over to Manchester, and was very impressed both with the tone and the finish of the Moutrie grands. Yes, they are Chinese, but they have Renner hammers, and Roslau strings, and the action, which I have now seen completely removed by my technician, is well finished and of good quality. The tone is deep yet clear, and doesn't run out of steam as soon as you get on to the final set of bass strings. This is even true of the smaller, and cheaper, Moutrie 152. Furthermore, I had the choice of 5 Moutrie 152s and 3 Moutrie 186s to take my pick from. I got the actual piano I had chosen, along with free delivery, a free stool, and a cover and castor cups.

Tonally I think this piano will be one I keep for many years, and I today tried recording it for some accompaniments ( I'm an RCM - trained violinist ), and it's every bit as good as a friends 7 ft -ish Petrof grand, which cost a whole lot more.

I am told that baby grands are between 4ft and 6ft , above 6 ft and it's a boudoir. 3ft sounds ridiculously small.....

I bought a new Roland digital piano for £1500 last year having spent thirty years with traditional pianos and I found it has opened up my whole approach to playing. The quality is astoundingly good and you can even choose the type of sound you want and the sort of accoustic you want to play it in. You can get a very passable stab at a concert grand in a concert hall if you twiddle the right buttons.

Keyboard weight can be altered for children and of course you avoid the not inconsiderable cost of repeated tuning.

I also like to play a lot of Scarlatti and Bach and for this you can switch into an excellent harpichord mode - all the sounds are synthesised from actual instruments.

If there are neighbour problems you can use headphones and just recently I have been feeding sound from the instrument into a laptop and using a sound editing programme to produce some really professional recordings.

You cannot do any of this on the traditional instrument and if you shop around a bit you can find some excellent buys on the used market well below the £1500 I paid for mine.

I have nothing whatever to do with Roland and I am certain that Clavinova and others are just as suitable.

I do hope this helps.

Your piano repair man and piano teacher, if they really did say this, are talking absolute rubbish!

You might as well say don't buy a small car because it has smaller diameter wheels than a large car.

If any paino; grand, baby grand or upright is in good condition, in tune and properly voiced, they will all produce good sounding music if played by a competant pianist.

There is a halfway house - pianos such as the Yamaha Silent Series. These are traditional upright pianos with an additional digital output. For those late-night practice sessions you can prevent the hammers hitting the strings and listen to the output from its internal sound card on headphones. There is the facility to interface to a PC using a MIDI connection so you can do all your harpsichord playing that way (e.g. using a piano sampler).

Okay, you cannot change the weight of the keys and some of the other stuff you mentioned, but I wanted to make a post to point out that there are not just the two stark choices between traditional and digital.

I myself have one of these and the silent mechanism, while not the nearly same as playing a traditional instrument (e.g. nuance of tone, resonance etc), has value in terms of allowing one to do some practice at unsociable hours.

I have a lovely wee Kemble budoir grand. It has earned its keep!

Aren't there some real electronic smashers now - we could sit for hours - big children!

i know this is probably worthy of a new thread but this one has got me seriously thinking. I'm about to start working on my diploma and have got a digital piano, or very very old upright to practise on and thought that i would treat myself to my very own piano with the bit of money i have, and compared to the prices that are flying around this thread its not much at all, a mere £1100. Realistically is there anything out there that would be suitable for my budget? (i've had enough trouble convincing my dad that i want to spend £1000 on a piano, let alone any more)

There are just two pianos I absolutely hate. (although pearl river is not favoured either!) Kimball american brand.. you have to bang at it terribly to get a note out and then it has the problem of the keys sticking all too often (my first piano).

And Challen. The sound is ... ugh... I don't even think much of their baby grand. Just a more expensive version of a not so good China piano.