I thought I owned a console piano, but my piano tuner says its actually a spinet. Whats the difference?
A. Oh, probably about 500 bucks. Actually, spinets and consoles are both small vertical pianos that appear very similiar to the naked eye, or even a well clothed eye for that matter. The difference is mostly technical; spinets are around 6 or 7 inches shorter than consoles, as a rule, by virtue of having the action dropped below the level of the keyboard, a design known as the “drop action.” This arrangement makes spinets a little shorter and lighter than consoles (which have the action setting directly on the keys and hence is called a “direct blow action.” Don’t you just love copywriters?) Unfortunately, the drop action can have more mechanical problems, is more difficult to remove and will probably cost you more money if you ever need to have it worked on. Being shorter, spinets also have slightly smaller soundboards and shorter strings which gives them less volume and poorer tone that the larger consoles (all other factors being equal, which of course they rarely are, bigger pianos
