The Yamaha Piano Company: A Short History

The Yamaha Piano company has been building pianos in Japan since 1887. Using a blend of quality craftsmanship and advanced equipment and robotics, they have become known as one of the top three mass producing piano companies in the world. At one time Japan was the only place where Yamaha piano and other instruments where made, but now they have a large scale factories in China, Indonesia, and even the US at one time. Most people agree that some models from the Yamaha piano company have become better over the years, but others will argue the 1970’s and 1980’s were the “golden age” of Yamaha’s large-scale production.

The Yamaha UX3 upright piano is considered one of the top professional upright pianos in the world under $15,000. For many years this was the top choice for practice and teaching studios across Europe, Asia and North America. Since the price of Japanese labour has made the Yamaha piano company less competitive, it is now rare to find a new Yamaha U3 available in a piano store to test, but used U3 models are everywhere. Since used pianos are priced more based on condition then age, it’s sometimes difficult to sift through the poor condition models to find something worth purchasing.