What We Offer
The most comprehensive selection of hand-crafted pianos in Utah. Period.
We’ve carefully selected the brands we carry to ensure that the manufacturer’s quality standard matches our own, and provides an excellent competitive value for our customers. Since price is often the most important factor in a piano buying decision, we invite you to compare the hand-crafted pianos we carry with the mass-produced options available from our competitors. In most cases you’ll find that, with them, you’re overpaying for a brand name but getting shorted in design and quality of materials.
A low-pressure sales environment where the customer’s needs come first.
We don’t hire professional salespeople. Instead, our non-commissioned piano technicians are here to guide you in the selection the highest quality instrument available in your price range. We want to help you find the perfect piano, not just make a sale.
No-nonsense, haggle-free pricing.
There’s a vast difference between a great value and a great price. We believe the traditional approach of discounting from the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price is backwards. Instead, our pricing is based on what we actually paid, wholesale, for the piano. If we buy at a discount, so do you. This means that, regardless of your price range, you pay what’s fair, not what some salesman tells you is “on sale” this week.
Technical expertise.
We’re different. There is no other dealer in Utah with the technical expertise you’ll find at Baldassin Pianos. We don’t hire contract technicians to service our pianos like most dealers do. We are the technicians. When we’re not busy helping customers, we’re busy in the shop restoring vintage pianos. Our technicians are all members of the Piano Technicians Guild. Since 1969 the guild has honored one outstanding PTG member each year with the Golden Hammer Award. 48 winners so far, but only one from Utah: Rick Baldassin.
What We Don’t
Poorly-designed, mass-produced, assembly-line-built pianos.
All pianos are not created equally. Modern manufacturing techniques have allowed companies to produce more pianos in a shorter amount of time. To do this requires making compromises like artificially drying and aging wood, replacing wooden parts with plastics or composites, and using readily available, but lower quality, materials to efficiently create a piano that is, at best, simply adequate. Determining levels of quality is not always easy, since even pianos carrying the same brand name are available in varying levels of quality and from different countries of origin. To add to the confusion, piano brands that were household names half a century ago have become mere trademarks to be purchased and stenciled on to the cabinets of inexpensive and poorly made Chinese pianos. In fact, the brand once known as “America’s Favorite Piano” is now mass produced in Zhongshan, China and those pianos maintain only a cosmetic resemblance to the pianos that earned that brand its reputation. Navigating this confusing landscape can be a challenge for anyone, especially when brand names are misrepresented by salespeople in search of a commission check.
At Baldassin Pianos, we carry the world’s finest hand-crafted pianos. While we offer a selection of affordable, entry-level instruments, we’ve taken great care to ensure that the products we offer are more than simply adequate. They’re a great value for our price-conscious customers.
Salespeople who value their commissions over their customers.
Q: What do you do with an unemployed used car salesman?
A: Ask him if he can play the piano.
Jokes aside, we all know that commissioned salespeople are motivated by making the next big sale and finding a bigger payday. This is often true of the salespeople you’ll find at most piano dealers. Unfortunately, these salespeople also receive little or no training about how pianos work, how they’re constructed, or what makes some pianos better than others, but they are notoriously great at perpetuating the half-truths they’ve picked up along the way. Some honestly view pianos as nothing more than sound-producing pieces of furniture, and many piano salespeople seem a lot more concerned with what ends up in their wallet than what ends up in your living room.
At Baldassin Pianos, we strive for happy customers who never feel pressured or pushed and always pay a fair price. And the knowledge passed on to you by our highly knowledgeable technicians? Yours free of charge!
Confusing “discount” pricing.
To understand why discount pricing is confusing, you need to know that, in most showrooms, the suggested retail price displayed is an arbitrary number. That’s a nice way of saying that it’s a complete fabrication. Fiction. Made up. You’ll probably also see discounted price which, in most cases, is a fixed-percentage reduction from the arbitrary, fictional, made-up number. Confused yet? There’s also a third price you won’t be privy to. It’s an undisclosed price that represents the basis for calculating the salesperson’s base commission. If the salesperson can get you to buy the piano for more than this undisclosed price, they get paid a healthy percentage of the difference, allowing them to pad their pockets by charging you more. To make matters worse, since the only price that isn’t fiction is the one you’re not privy to, it’s impossible to know you’re getting a good deal. Ouch!
At Baldassin Pianos, our prices aren’t based on fiction. They’re based on what we actually paid for the instruments in our inventory. We’ll quote you our best price from the start, allowing you to focus on what’s most important: finding the perfect piano!
Gimmick sales
You’ve heard the ads and seen the mailers. Some local piano dealers are notorious for holding several “off-site” sales events each year. Under the guise of a “school sale” or a “store closing sale” or an “warehouse clearance sale” you’re able to purchase a piano at a “huge” discount (from that arbitrary number, of course). Often, you’ll find inventory at these sales that has been moved directly from the showroom floor to an offsite location, “discounted” a little bit more than the store price, and sold to you by a salesperson flown in just for this event because they’re especially good at pressuring you into buying today!
At Baldassin Pianos, we quote you our best sale price every day. We’ve found that straight talk is appreciated a lot more than the perception of getting a great deal that’s here today, gone tomorrow.