Gadgetell Review: PianoDisc iQ

There are two parts to any Player system for an acoustical piano. First there’s the piano itself, and then there’s the player mechanism. And they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Pre-install: decisions, decisions, decisions

Before installing a player into my mother’s 1928 Sohmer piano, I did a lot of research. And what I learned was that there is a lot of misinformation out there. I was told everything from “it cannot be done,” to “it will be less expensive to just purchase a new piano with a new player pre-installed,” to “no problem – we do this all the time.”

Sorting out the facts from the uninformed opinions (or sales talk) was a task in itself. After all, this was a destructive modification. The piano bottom would be cut open and would thus require a skilled installer who knew what they are doing to do it right the first time.

I was told that installing a player in a piano from 1928 would really justify at least a partial, if not a complete, rebuild of the entire piano’s moving parts. While the piano sounded fine, after hearing the analogy of having Billy Joel over my house playing “Piano Man” on my piano every day, I agreed to also contract to have the piano rebuilt. So that had to come first.

Why am I telling you this? Because anyone contemplating retrofitting a player in their piano should really silence those other voices and just get on to doing that — and just that. If the piano needs to be rebuilt, you can rebuild it at anytime. If it needs to be refinished, you can refinish it at any time. If you tally up all those costs and decide it’s not worth it — and this is going to sound obvious — then don’t proceed with any of it, and enjoy Grandma’s piano for what it is, an heirloom.

Picking PianoDisc

I went for both the rebuild and the player. There are about 4-5 vendors of player pianos out there. All work on basically the same three principles; a solenoid bar to strike the keys, a decoder unit that will take the coded music and activate the solenoids, and the source format of the music. Deciding which player to install really should depend on your selection of the audio format you choose and the availability of music software.

I decided on PianoDisc as they were the only one who had a product that utilized the latest storage media and/or the Internet. Other vendors had legacy products that still used special Floppy Disk Drives (just try to get a laptop with a floppy drive today!). That alone told me a lot about the engineering of the companies products.

Further – the PianoDisc products even allowed my iPod to be my source for the piano coded music. That meant that there would be no visible player what-so-ever attached to the front of my piano the way the rest of the CD based player systems are installed today.

Go play yourself, piano.

The PianoDisc product and their people were terrific. They provided me with several authorized installers in my area that I could interview and compare. I selected Ed Dryberg Piano in Northern New Jersey who did the entire project professionally and after just a couple of weeks I am now enjoying mom’s piano with a plethora of music choices.

If you check out PianoDisc’s website, you’ll see that they support all the sources including CD players, iPods that are loaded by iTunes,and even one system called the Opus that downloads music directly to it. They also have a host of options that will satisfy even the most techno of acoustical aficionados.

So, here’s the final result. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. If you are looking to get the straight scoop on players, talk with Ed. He’ll describe the entire process and provide you the reassurance of hundreds of satisfied customers. I’m one of them. From a player perspective, this is a no-brainer, but there are a host of other financial if not sentimental decisions that come first.

Read [PianoDisc iQ]