The Case Against Steinway, in Steinway's Own Numbers

Nine out of ten concert pianists choose Steinway. You've seen that line on a showroom wall, and it's the single most effective sentence in the piano business.

Here's where it comes from. Steinway emails the world's majorMajorReferring to a scale or chord containing a major third. In Western music, usually associated with brightness, stability, or happiness.The Savvy Take: Don’t play Major keys as just “happy.” They can be triumphant, calm, nostalgic, or regal. A C Major chord played pianissimo is very different from one played fortissimo.View in glossary → orchestras at the end of each season and asks what the soloists played. The company's own description of why is worth reading twice: it does this "in order to gauge how we are doing and to ensure that we can continue to make our claim that '9 out of 10 concert pianists' perform on Steinway pianos." Its survey page adds that Steinways "have never accounted for less than 95% of the performances reported to us in any given year." Reported to us. There's no auditor named on either page, no response rate, and no stated basis for which orchestras get asked.

I'm a piano technician. I tune, regulate and voice these instruments, and I've got no quarrel with how a good Steinway sounds. My quarrel is with what the marketing claims the price is buying you, because most of the evidence against it comes from Steinway's own documents.

The 97% is a survey Steinway runs on itself

The most recent season Steinway reports is 2018-19. Its published summary gives 794 entries across 100 orchestras, of which 777 were Steinway and 17 were something else. That's 97.8%.

Now look at how those entries are distributed, because the sheet lists every orchestra by name. The Mariinsky Theatre accounts for 78 of them. The Moscow State SymphonySymphonyA large-scale composition for orchestra, usually in four movements.The Savvy Take: The piano is often called “an orchestra in 88 keys.” When playing big Sonatas (like Beethoven or Liszt), imagine you are the conductor of a symphony. “This part is the strings,” “this part is the brass.” It changes how you voice the chords.View in glossary → accounts for 52. The Wiener Philharmoniker accounts for 2, the Royal Concertgebouw for 5, and the Akron Symphony Orchestra for 1. Two Russian houses supply more than a sixth of the entire sample, and the Vienna Philharmonic supplies two.

That doesn't make the number false. Steinway is the default concert instrument, and no honest technician would tell you otherwise. What it means is that "9 out of 10 concert pianists" is a house tally with an uneven denominator, not an independent finding, and Steinway's own filing to the SEC concedes it's one of several makers on the concert stage.

What Steinway told the SEC in 2023

In March 2023 Steinway filed to go public, then withdrew the offering that May. The prospectus is the most candid document the company has ever published, because it was written for regulators.

It places Steinway in "the global personal luxury goods market." Among its growth strategies it lists, in its own words, "Leverage our pricing power." And it gives the arithmetic: between fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2022 the average sales price of a Steinway piano rose 54.1%, a compound rate of 7.5% a year, while unit volume rose 24.7%.

Read those two figures together. Prices climbed at more than twice the rate volume did, over a period when the company also cut its debt from $311.6 million to $27.5 million and grew consolidated net sales from $385.7 million to $575.5 million. That's a well-run luxury business executing a stated pricing strategy. It's a different thing from a workshop passing along the cost of better spruce.

Steinway publishes no prices at all on its own website. The pricing page is a contact form, with the explanation that prices vary by model, finish, cartage and exchange rate. So the numbers have to come from dealers. Schmitt Music, an exclusive Steinway dealer in the Midwest, listed a new Model B at $180,100 and a Model D at $284,100 when I checked in August 2026. Bradfield Piano in Dallas, which states it doesn't sell pianos, publishes an MSRP table last updated 14 March 2026 putting the Model B at about $146,900 and the Model D at about $246,900. Those two disagree by more than thirty thousand dollars on the same instrument, which tells you something about what "the price" even means here.

Steinway's own president says no two are alike

The variability that buyers discover is not a rumour from technicians. It's in Steinway's marketing, framed as romance.

Ron Losby, Steinway's president for the Americas, has said on Steinway's own site that two identically built Steinways turnTurnAn ornament consisting of four notes: the note above, the main note, the note below, and the main note again.The Savvy Take: A Turn is like drawing a circle around a note. It decorates the pitch. Don’t rush it so much that it sounds like a glitch; it should be a graceful curl.View in glossary → out different from each other. The company's Selection Room exists because of it: the pianist Jura Margulis played around 25 instruments there to choose 10 Model Bs. The Steinway dealer M. Steinert & Sons tells prospective buyers the selection process typically shows you six examples of the same model.

Sit with that. On a $180,000 purchase, the manufacturer's recommended procedure is to audition six of them, because it can't tell you in advance which one you'll want. Piano Buyer, the trade's standard reference, reports that technicians observe some Steinways have more potential than others, that some buyers simply "can't find a good Steinway," and that the brand needs more dealer preparation than its peers. Steinway keeps larger models at the New York factory for buyers who couldn't find one they liked at a dealer.

Steinway's defenders call this character. Technicians and experienced buyers call it the Steinway lottery. You can absolutely find a magical one, and you may need to hunt longer than you would elsewhere.

Which sits oddly beside the Hexagrip pinblockPinblockA multi-laminated hardwood plank, hard rock maple in most American pianos, that the tuning pins are driven into. Its grip on those pins holds your tuning.The Savvy Take: A piano that goes sour a week after every tuning has a block problem, not a tuner problem. No liquid in a bottle brings that grip back. The real fix is a new block and restringing: $10,500 to $15,500 at Total Piano Care in Southern California.View in glossary → copy above, where Steinway describes seven laminated layers of hardrock maple with the grain offset 45 to 90 degrees, and concludes that this is "the secret to how Steinways are able to maintain their world-renowned sound far beyond their last tuning." That's a claim about consistency, from a company whose president says no two come out the same.

Teflon, 1962 to 1982

The clearest evidence that the name doesn't confer immunity is the Teflon bushingBushingA sleeve of wool cloth lining a hole where a metal pin passes through wood. Pianos use them in the key mortises and at every action center.The Savvy Take: Worn key bushings let the key rock sideways, and you hear it as a click at the bottom of the stroke. That's a repair, not your technique. Floating Piano Factory in Brooklyn posts $200 for all 88. Don't let anyone take up the slop by bending the guide pin.View in glossary → era, and it's worth getting right because it's routinely exaggerated.

Starting in 1962, New York-built Steinways used Teflon bushings at the action centres, marketed as the Permafree action. Larry Fine explains the mechanism in The Piano Book: Teflon is inert and immune to humidity, but the wood around it isn't. In the humid season some bushings went loose in their wooden parts, which Fine notes is the opposite of what you'd guess, and those notes clicked. Steinway began returning to cloth in 1981 by Fine's dating, and Chupp's Piano Service in New Paris, Indiana puts the transition out at 1982. Hamburg stayed with cloth throughout.

Worth knowing that the field doesn't agree on the direction. Precision Piano Services in North Hollywood describes the reverse polarity, wood swelling in humid weather to tighten the pin and shrinking in dry weather to loosen it. Three published accounts give three versions of which season clicks, which is itself a fair description of how well understood this is.

Steinway knew. Documents from the collection of the late Ed Hendricks, published by Chupp's, include a 1 May 1978 memo titled "Bushing Cloth Project FINAL REPORT" in which William T. Steinway concluded that without a completely trouble-free Teflon bushing the company couldn't overcome the reputation the parts had developed. A 1977 interoffice memo recorded Teflon bushing centres as the top quality issue coming back from the field. Steinway's public history of its action doesn't mention 1962 or Teflon at all; its dated entries run from 1931 straight to a 1983 successor.

Now the correction to my own side of the argument. Fine's actual buyer advice is measured: for average piano use in the home, Teflon may not warrant concern, technicians with extensive experience report few problems once the troublesome bushings are replaced in the first few seasons, and the remedy is "not particularly difficult." Peter Grey, a Registered Piano Technician in Stratham, New Hampshire, posted on the Guild's own list in October 2023 that if everything works there's no need to categorically replace the action. If you're weighing a used Steinway from this era, the first job is finding out which year it is, and the serial number will tell you that.

Larry Fine sold his own Steinway and did worse than a bank

The investment story is the part I'd push back on hardest, and the best witness against it is the man who publishes the trade's price guide. If you want the wider view of what any of this costs, I keep a separate breakdown.

Larry Fine, publisher and editor of Piano Buyer, told The Hatch Institute in February 2019 that his parents bought him a Steinway Model M in 1967 for $3,500, that he sold it a few years before that interview for $10,000, and that he'd have done better putting the money in a bank. He said Steinway shouldn't be marketing pianos as a good investment, because most of the apparent gain is inflation. In his own depreciation guidance he writes that used pianos lose value against comparable new ones at roughly 1.5 to 2% a year.

He also described Steinway's real competitive problem: the used and rebuilt market. There are used Steinways everywhere and it's a buyer's market. Piano Buyer's brand profile says the same thing, that Steinway's principal competition comes from used and restored Steinways, and notes that Steinway itself operates the world's largest piano rebuilding facility. A well-rebuilt older instrument is the thing standing between the company and its pricing power, which is why you'll hear new-piano salespeople disparage rebuilds. If you want the fuller picture on what any of this costs, I've written up restoration economics separately.

Pittsburgh, 2023

The fairest story I know cuts both ways. The Pittsburgh Symphony bought a new $198,000 Steinway concert grandConcert GrandThe grands built for concert halls, generally nine feet and longer. Steinway's Model D measures 8 feet 11 3/4 inches and weighs 1,064 pounds.The Savvy Take: Nine feet buys long bass strings, so the bottom octave has pitch instead of thud. Hall pianos get tuned before every performance, sometimes again at intermission. A $200,000 Model D in a living room is a mistake, since you can't open the lid.View in glossary →, and visiting soloists including Lang Lang and Emanuel Ax kept choosing the orchestra's 21-year-old instrument instead. That's the criticism.

Here's the other half, and it belongs in any honest case against the company. Steinway's president sent the company's chief concert technician to Pittsburgh, Steinway paid for the work, and the piano came right. A firm that stands behind a bad one is not the same as a firm that ships bad ones and shrugs.

What competes at Chopin, and the caveat nobody prints

At the 19th Chopin Competition in 2025, competitors chose among five instruments. Steinway was still the volume choice, taken by 42 of the 84 listed competitors, against 21 for Shigeru Kawai, 10 for Fazioli, 9 for Yamaha and 2 for Bechstein. First prize went to Eric Lu on the Fazioli. In 2021, Bruce Liu won on a Fazioli too, and no Yamaha player placed in 2025.

Fazioli builds around 150 pianos a year in Sacile, Italy, with about 50 staff and roughly a two-year build cycle. Kawai builds fewer than 20 SK-EX concert grands a year at its Ryuyo factory and sends a Master Piano Artisan to your home within two years of purchase to regulate and voice it. Juilliard, all-Steinway since 1924, bought a Fazioli in 2011. On price, Alamo Piano Galleries lists a Shigeru Kawai SK-6 at $118,395 and Apex Piano Showroom in Roanoke lists a Yamaha S6X at $107,399, against that $180,100 Model B.

And here's the caveat the original version of this article should have carried. Larry Fine has stated in print that an objective comparative quality rating of pianos can't be done, and that a blind panel would likely produce results "so scattered and inconclusive as to be virtually useless." So when anyone tells you Shigeru Kawai is more consistent than Steinway, mine included, that's an impression from the bench, not a measurement. Nobody has run the study.

The Savvy Verdict

Steinway makes great pianos. A well-prepped one is a different experience, and I've tuned instruments from that factory I'd happily own.

What I won't defend is the gap between the marketing and the documents. The 97% is a self-run tally. The price rose 54.1% in six years while the company told regulators it was leveraging pricing power in the luxury goods market. The maker's own recommended buying procedure is to play six examples because it can't predict which one is good. And the field's most authoritative voice sold his and would have done better with a savings account.

So play the piano, not the logo. Bring your own technician, not the dealer's. Play several examples of the same model and take the one your hands prefer, whatever the fallboardFallboardThe hinged panel that folds down over the keys when the piano isn't being played. On most uprights it also carries or folds into the music desk.The Savvy Take: Most people have this backwards. Ivory yellows in the dark, so an ivory-keyed piano wants the fallboard open in a lit room, never afternoon sun. Plastic keytops yellow under UV instead, so those get covered. Don't set a drink on a panel that sits over the keys.View in glossary → says. If that turns out to be the Steinway, buy the Steinway, and know exactly what you paid the premium for.