consumer guides

After carefully reading this easy-to-understand book, you will be more knowledgeable and better-informed than virtually any salesperson you'll meet. Rather than relying on salespersons' "soundbites," you will have a comprehensive knowledge of the truly important aspects of quality for any piano, used or new, grand or vertical, and be able to compare features from brand to brand or dealer to dealer. Having played the piano for over 30 years, I very much enjoyed learning so much about the construction and features of this instrument. The book validated many of the perceptions which I already held about certain brands, and allowed me to expand my horizons and look at others I hadn't really considered. In fact, I ended up purchasing a higher-quality brand than I expected to, which I hadn't even really considered at the beginning. If you are in the market for ANY piano, or just interested in learning more about pianos, this book is worth far more than its small cost.

A final note- if shopping for a new piano, it is ESSENTIAL to also purchase the current Annual Supplement to The Piano Book, which provides cumulative updated information since the publication of the full book, and most importantly, it gives list prices for every new piano available in the U.S., which in my experience were accurate. Mr. Fine also provides extremely helpful advice on expected discounts from list price, and negotiating the selling price with the dealer.

I've had two piano teachers and at least one technician recommend The Piano Book to me, and they were absolutely right.

Larry Fine does an outstanding job with explaining how to recognize quality in pianos and how to get the trade-off you are looking for. As I read the book, particularly the first edition, it came more obvious which choices for a piano I would like to consider or weed out. It told me many of the aspects of the various piano manufacturers as well as what kind of sales gimmicks to be alert for when I am shopping for anything. Since this book will do all of this explaining, it would definitely be useful to any piano shopper, whether you are looking for one to use or rebuild. It could be also useful for anyone who is studying the economics because it even shows examples of all the different trade-off combinations that a purchaser can run into while shopping for a piano. The Piano Book is also useful because it has information that would be essential to piano owners as well as piano technicians. It tells them everything one needs to know while moving, maintaining, cleaning, or whatever the case may be. Since this is the case, it could help just about anyone involved with the piano decide wisely what they want to do as far as their instruments are concerned. Since Larry Fine gives information on roughly what the piano market is like in his "Piano Book", he helps many purchasers come to a successful conclusion with their piano purchase or maintence, so definitely before you come to a decision about what you want to do about a piano, STOP! Read Larry Fine's book before making an expensive piano decision.

I purchased this book based on the glowing reviews on Amazon as well as on other piano related sites. The book IS a great concept and appears to be quite comprehensive on first glance.

However, if you are shopping in Europe or are interested in including in your search quality European piano manufacturers (many of which have been around 100-150 years) the book is hopelessly incomplete and, more than once, severely out of date and inaccurate. On the entries for various German brands Mr. Fine keeps repeating phrases such as "no pianos appear in our survey", "I have heard that...", "I played on one once...", "it is difficult to make distinctions" or simply copies text from the advertising brochures of the manufacturers.

The ratings and rankings in the summary section and classification of quality are clearly indicated to be the opinion of Mr. Fine, yet are based on only anecdotal evidence. Worse yet, information on changes in ownership or farming out of manufacturing which has taken place in some instances during the last years -- with an enormous impact on quality -- is not reflected in the rankings.

In summary, this is a great book if you know nothing of pianos and are shopping in the States on the low end for cheap Chinese knockoffs or consumer products from the likes of Young Chang, Kawai, Yamaha, etc. If you are trying to sort out the middle/quality or top of the market, include European brands, or buy a traditional grand piano, the book is incomplete and based on heresay/opinion rather than research. It is not terribly useful and can be at times misleading.