I grew up playing a Story & Clark upright that my parents bought me when I was seven when they started me on piano lessons. I didn't play much in college, but afterwards my girlfriend (now my wife) and I moved to a rental house about two blocks from my mom and wheeled that Story & Clark down the street on a furniture dolly from Mom's house to our house and I started playing again.
Not long afterward we moved to an apartment with the piano. I was worried about disturbing the neighbors so I bought a Roland EP-7 (76 keys, semi-weighted) for silent practice. I had fun with it at first but eventually concluded that playing on the EP-7 was anti-practice: it made my playing worse!
After a few years of lessons as a young adult my teacher suggested that I get a grand piano. After a long, arduous search I ended up buying a 1951 Steinway M that appeared to have barely been played. It had cosmetic issues but really nice sound and touch!
Years later we bought a small condo in the mountains for skiing. On the way up to ski one day I went to Guitar Center and played all their slab pianos. I liked the Casio PX330 better than any of the others so I bought it for the condo.
During Covid my piano time went way up. I was worried about disturbing my wife with all my playing so after lots of internet research I bought a Kawai ES-920 without playing it first. I had to wait a few weeks for delivery because they weren't available in the US yet. Fortunately I really like it, and I even bought another one to replace the Casio at the condo.
Also during Covid I became increasingly aware that my 70 year old Steinway M was worn out. After lots of research about piano rebuilding and working with some local techs, I sent the piano to Lindeblad in New Jersey (I live in California). My piano was gone for six months! Lindeblad loaned me a beat up Yamaha C2 that I hardly played because the ES-920 was much better to play. I told the Lindeblad folks they needed to rebuild the C2 as well!
When I got my piano back it was amazing! It plays better than ever, with great dynamic control and a really nice tone. And all of the cosmetic issues are fixed!
I feel very fortunate!
