For many musicians, the enjoyment of playing your instrument is rivaled only by the enjoyment of listening to your favorite composition or piece of music. The demands of everyday life often interfere with the ability to spent hours sitting at your piano to play. A player system can be the perfect solution to increase your daily enjoyment of your piano.
Why Install a Player System?
We often have customers come to us for our expert opinion on piano restoration projects and antique piano purchases. Advising our customers to consider installing a player system in their piano is one way we can encourage frequent use, which is best for the health and life of the piano.
Additionally, installing an automatic player system offers piano owners a chance to get more out of their investment, instead of simply having a piano as a decorative piece in a home. For a marginal additional price at the time of restoration or purchase, piano owners get a piano that is capable of thousands of hours of automatic playing.
Evaluating Player System Features
As with any add-on components, player systems can range in price and offer a variety of different functionalities depending on the type and level of investment. At Lindeblad, we offer two of the top-rated digital piano player systems on the market. Both of these are mid-range in price and are well known for their large music libraries, playback and recording features, as well as their easy iPad interfaces. We strongly endorse both of these systems for their adaptability to any piano brand and model.
Many of our Steinway customers request information about the popular Steinway Spirio player system. While it is a good system, the Spirio can only be installed on select Steinways (Model M 5'7" & B 6'10"). This severely limits the number of customers that can choose the Steinway player technology. Additionally, the Spirio music library only offers Steinway-endorsed musicians with limitations on what can be played through your piano.
In fact, prior to developing their own proprietary Spirio system, Steinway used one of the player piano systems that Lindeblad continues to recommend for our customers today. While Steinway now offers their own system, there are features they decided not to include that we find particularly valuable about the previous system they favored - the system Lindeblad still endorses and installs.
So, we’ve put together a comparison chart to help you quickly evaluate the differences between the Steinway Spirio system and the two player systems that we install on our customers' pianos.
Installing a Player System: The Time and Investment
At Lindeblad, we install between 50+ automatic players annually. Installing a player system is an easy add-on that our team completes during the final steps in the restoration process.
However, we can also install a player system on any of our for-sale pianos before we ship and deliver the piano to its final destination. In this case, we can complete a player system installation in less than two weeks.
Depending on the player system that you select, the price can range significantly. The Steinway Spirio system can cost upwards of $20,000. The Steinway brand comes with a premium price tag, and the player systems are no exception. For the two player system brands we endorse and install at Lindeblad, the price ranges anywhere between $5,000-10,000 for the hardware, full installation and configuration.
If you have any questions about player systems, how they work and what you should be looking to purchase for your piano, contact us today!
