Uprights are pianos which the soundboard and plane of the strings run vertically, perpendicular to the keyboard, thus taking up less floor space than the normal grand piano. Upright pianos are made in various heights; the shortest are called spinets or consoles, and these are generally considered to have an inferior tone resulting from the shortness of their strings and their relatively small soundboards. The larger upright pianos were quite popular in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The action (hammer and damper mechanism) of the upright differs from the grand-piano action mainly in that upright action is returned to a resting position by means of springs rather than by gravity alone, as in a grand. This, in part, accounts for the characteristic “touch” of uprights, which is distinct from that of grands. The chief advantages of upright pianos lie in their modest price and compactness; they are instruments for the home and school, not for the concert stage.
The majority of upright pianos have strings running upward from the bottom of the case, near the floor; this design is owed to John Isaac Hawkins, an Englishman who lived in the United States in about 1800 and became an important piano maker in Philadelphia. Earlier, the strings started upward from near the level of the keys; these instruments were necessarily much taller and lent themselves to various decorative designs, among them lyre-shaped; round; the “pyramid” model (Pyramidenflügel; 1745) of the Saxon organ-builder Ernst Christian Friderici, with both sides sloping upward to the flat top; and the “giraffe-style” design (Giraffenflügel; 1804) of Martin Seuffert of Vienna, with one side straight and one bent, as on a grand piano.
From Britannica
Piano manufacturing is, by its nature, a materials-intensive craft. A modern grand piano contains roughly 12,000 individual components. It requires carefully selected hardwoods — spruce, maple, beech, walnut — sourced from forests in multiple countries. It uses felt, leather, metal alloys, and chemical finishes. Building one well takes skilled labor spanning months.
In January 2026, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas included something that would have seemed out of place a decade ago: a piano technology exhibit generating genuine buzz alongside the televisions, smartphones, and AI gadgets that dominate the show floor. The products on display — connected instruments, app-integrated learning systems, multi-device MIDI setups — weren't novelties. They were the direction the piano industry is heading.
For years, the piano world operated on a fairly clean division: acoustic instruments for those who could afford the space and maintenance, digital pianos for everyone else. That division has been eroding steadily, and by 2026, it has given way to something more interesting — a category of instruments that refuses to sit neatly on either side of the line.
