Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum What does Piano World think of the Schimmel Konzert series?

Give that previous link to the Pianobuyer article (in this thread) a read for an explanation of the theory and marketing behind it.

"I think comparing Schimmel to Young Chang is an serious insult to the great German manufacturer...", this is non-sense and chauvinist.

I'm not pro-Chinese, au contraire, but let's be realistic. From technologies transferred from European companies, now Chinese builds hi-speed trains equivalent to European trains, but cheaper, and ready to export.

Space program: How Europeans go to space NOW? As passengers carried by Americans or Russians whereas Chinese ride their own rockets into space, and they already sent their rocket to the moon! Have Europeans sent anything to moon yet? How many?

These 2 examples show clearly that a lot of presumptions about technologique, manufacturing European advance above Chinese need to be reconsidered. Piano is only an engineered product, Chinese would not invest and make enough efforts to build an excellent piano because piano is still a symbol of above-average class, nobody would buy a expensive prestigious symbol from China, so it's not economically meaningful to build a Steinway made-in China; but this is nothing to do with manufacturing ability. Schimmel is a good piano, but not a prestigious piano, Schimmel is not a symbol of anything. If Chinese want, they can beat up Schimmel as they did with hi-speed trains, with space program.

Look at the nine-dash line sea claimed by Chinese NOW in South-East Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line#/media/File:9_dotted_line.png

Surrounding Asian countries are threatened now everyday, Vietnamese, Philippine fisherman are threatened, killed by Chinese Coast Guard, and these countries don’t know what to do with this Chinese expansionism, we did see same thing in 1939-1945, how many dead? and will see same thing again when Chinese manufacturing machine hungry of resource already show its teeth and pawns. When driving we look in front instead of looking at back mirror.

Young Chang is a Korean piano, fyi

Thanks PhantomFive, I was wrong when thinking Young Chang is a Chinese brand; however, where are Korean now in manufacturing arena? let’s Google:

“Samsung overtakes Apple in U.S. smartphone market on the strength of Galaxy S7”( http://www.fiercewireless.com/wirel...u-s-smartphone-market-strength-galaxy-s7 )

“Samsung dominates global TV market for 10th straight year”
( http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1458017308 ), but OLED LG TV now is far ahead on any top-of-the-line Samsung TV on picture quality!

How's about car – the traditional manufacturing work of Europe and USA since car invention? Let’s look at market share of Hyundai and Kia, two Korean car manufacturers
( http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/data/market-share-by-manufacturer.html)

knowing that “Hyundai Motor Company was founded in 1967.[5] Hyundai Heavy Industries was founded in 1973,[6] and completed the construction of its first ships in June 1974.[7]”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai).

How long other brands in http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/data/market-share-by-manufacturer.html have been on car market?

Compare Young Chang to Schimmel is a threat, a warning, not an insult.

hoola I appreciate your efforts but I think there's a better way to talk about this rather than bringing up Korean non-piano manufactured-goods (I really like my LG fridge, by the way, it's sooooo quiet).

The YC 9' is a concert-size grand. You have to have certain expectations and it was probably a good instrument when it was new. Maybe not good enough for the symphony but good enough for a large church. It's not a bad piano to the point of "insulting", it is just what it is; so a Schimmel fan (like myself) should not take offense. Schimmel is also is just what it is; it's made well and it sounds great. I just happened to like that particular 7' Schimmel over that particular 9' YC. Maybe another interpretation is that a 7' Schimmel could sound as good or better than a full concert grand.

I'd 100% agree with this. Tried some Schimmel K series uprights, and truth be told they didn't really do anything for me. Nice enough, but no better for my money than a Kawai K800 or Yamaha YUS5, and for me not even close to being worth the premium over those instruments.

But the grands, well, just wow. The K189 wasn't far short of the Grotrian Cabinet (probably my favourite piano in the world), while being a lot cheaper. Certainly a huge step up from Yamaha C3X and Kawai equivalent, and well worth the extra money imho.

If I ever get round to having the extension to take a grand piano built, they will be very near the top of my shopping list.

Not any longer. It is still owned by a Korean company but very few, if any, YC pianos are built in Korea.

ddf

the nine foot Young Chang probably wasn't one of the Del Fandrich designs and perhaps not representative of their absolute best products. there's a nice portrait of a smiling Mr. Fandrich on many Young Chang sites. they're now owned by Hyundai and have a huge, modern factory in Tianjin, PRC, so describing them as either Korean or Chinese isn't inaccurate.

From a technicians perspective, Schimmel Konzert Series are a pleasure to work on. They tune well and respond quickly to voicing techniques. Every owner of the K series pianos that I've serviced are very satisfied with their pianos; So I say, if you like it buy it.

Del - Is it accurate to say that only the higher end Albert Weber models are currently built in Korea - and the basic Young Chang and Weber models in China???

I think so. Keeping in mind that I've not been to Tianjin for several years.

ddf

Thanks Del. I got that info from the current edition of the PianoBuyer so I assume it is relatively accurate. It has been challenging to keep up with all of the changes at Young Chang over the past few years.

Or simply buy it.
And make it greater than perhaps ever was.

Heard the order books are suddenly full again...

Norbert

Gnuboi: I hold my gun when bringing up "non-piano manufactured-goods" from 3 different angles:

1/ Engineering: piano is a product of engineering, more precisely mechanical engineering - even some is called "hand-made" (I laugh when hearing, reading this, this is used to cheat the “un-educated” customers). A country that has a leading position in mechanical engineering like Korea with solid evidences (ship, car, and now jet manufacturing) can switch gears and build good piano easily (I was a mechanical engineer, having working experience in both designing and manufacturing. As a young student I was surprised that we could use different materials (woods, plastic, leather ...) in building a machine, I always thought about metals (steel, aluminum, copper…) when applying for mechanical engineering school; but that's exactly what we have in a piano, in a large proportion). The only question is how serious Korean want to invest in that direction + other economical parameters which can influence their decision.

2/ Musicality: A country with a long tradition in Western classical music will have more advantages, taste … than Japan, Korea, China ... but these countries build and consolidate their position in classical music, we see more and more pianists, violinists, conductors … in international arenas. From 1989 to 1994, Myung-whun Chung served as the Music Director of the Paris Opera - one of the La Meccas of classical music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myung-whun_Chung), this shows Korean's efforts and how far they go in Western classical music more than … 20 years ago.

3/ Analytical approach: I'm working now in Information Technology, one of the methodologies we use when analyzing "world" is systemic approach, we observe and analyze things from a holistic view, with different angles, so I don't want to compare orange to orange, piano manufactured-goods to piano manufactured-goods; but manufactured-goods to manufactured-goods to assess the piano, we will have more attributes to consider in our assessment and it will give a better picture.

If you don’t agree, please explain what we learn more if we limit our scope in only piano manufactured-goods when analyzing, comparing a piano - A manufactured-goods in essence?

You and Hoola are making my point.
You two don't like Audi A6. You think the Mercedes E350 is better.
He prefers his 2 Honda's. I like the Audi. USNEWs finds the Audi and the Mercedes equivalent but different http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.co...s=12798-369118_12754-372389_12714-372276

My analogy was only to point out that Schimmel is a high quality option if you love it. Hoola might prefer KawaiGX/Honda. You might prefer Steinway/Mercedes, I might prefer Schimmel/Audi. Or we can mix those up. In Pianos, Hoola prefers the Steinway but in cars he prefers the Honda.

Point is, they're all good cars and good pianos. If in 5 to 10 years the OP decides to buy any one of those brands, I'd be of the opinion he(or she) chose a very high quality instrument.

Exactly. It is also risky to generalize entire countries and across industries. Take Germany for example. Excellent pianos. So-so everything else. When a TV commercial touts "German engineering" it makes my skin crawl. Imagine "American engineering" or "Chinese engineering" in an ad. These methods take the perception of past "certain" successes of "others" and try to make you believe that the marketed product is just as awesome. The Chinese built the Great Wall and the Great Canal but would you trust that $5 quadcopter? The Americans built great [many things] but would you park that Pontiac in your garage and let it leak oil all over the place? "German engineering" with German-accent TV commercial actors takes it to a whole new level of awful.



I don't feel this has any direct relationship to quality of pianos produced. Again, more generalizations and quality by association. It's like Yamaha making excellent pianos out of Indonesia without a strong piano music tradition in Indonesia...



This approach has some challenges. The parameters you choose is finite and is at risk for bias. You might not be considering some things that are important, and you might be including unrelated parameters that you then correlate incorrectly. It's like running a study that concludes "75% of all countries making good pianos also make good cheese, therefore cheese quality is an indicator of piano quality". Taiwan makes great bicycles but terrible cars. Tread mindfully and self-reflect, often. I feel that I'm usually more wrong than right



Thanks for allowing me to discuss In summary my point is to throw the "country" out of the discussion.

As stated in http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/analsyst.html "The analytic and the systemic approaches are more complementary than opposed, yet neither one is reducible to the other". The model or perception received is only a snapshot and can not cover every thing, however it plays its temporary value, and we, with different views, approaches, show the picture in a more "colorful" way.

Thank you

PS: My arguments are to reply to the "German" in the phrase "I think comparing Schimmel to Young Chang is an serious insult to the great German manufacturer...".

Perhaps not.

From the Pianobuyer:

Schimmel also licenses the use of the name “Fridolin by Schimmel” to Young Chang, which makes this lower-cost line for Schimmel dealers who wish to represent it. This line is marketed and warranted by Young Chang.

AND

For Schimmel dealers, Young Chang now makes the Fridolin brand as a lower-cost alternative to the Schimmel piano. Fridolin is named after Fridolin Schimmel, younger brother of Wilhelm Schimmel, who founded the Schimmel Piano Company in Germany in 1885. Fridolin emigrated to America in 1890 and established his own piano-manufacturing business in Faribault, Minnesota, in 1893. Today’s Fridolin-branded pianos are similar to Young Chang’s Weber line, except that the Fridolins have upgraded hammers, and receive deluxe preparation in the factory before being shipped to dealers. The Fridolin line is warranted by Young Chang.

I placed an order of a K125 for my family last year. For some reason in the end I got a K132. It sounds warm, mellow, transparent, with enough clearness. The sound is as good as their Konzert grands I think. Both sound and touch are an apparent level up than the Classic series uprights I'd played.

P.S. I've seen many comments comparing Schimmel with Grotrian. I think their sounds are so different, based on different idea of music, that it is just like a comparison between oranges and apples. If you play Robert Schumann, it sounds more elegant, more decent on a Grotrian since it really owns more clarity. But if you play Claude Debussy, a Grotrian will not create the romantic, amorous, and flowing atmosphere that a Schimmel Konzert just serves you.