| A reputation for outstanding tone and action response. |
The Fandrich Vertical ActionTM was developed over a period of seven years by its inventor Darrell Fandrich, with assistance in the last several of those from piano technician Chris Trivelas. The action was introduced in the first prototype in a 1909 Steinway K52 owned by Chris at the 1989 California State Piano Technician Guild Convention in Fresno, California. The first US patent issued in 1990. The naïve expectation of all involved was that the action would immediately be swooped up by Yamaha or another large well established manufacturer and everyone would shortly retire rich. Although there was a great deal of interest and excitement from technicians working for the large manufacturers, Darrell and Chris soon found that the piano industry is steeped in tradition and slow to adopt innovations (it was after all, 80 years from the time Sebastian Erard introduced the modern grand piano action until it became the industry standard about 1900).
Piano technician Ed Richards became a supporter of the action and traveled in 1990 to England's piano action manufacturer and then to the Louis Renner company in Germany who agreed to manufacture the specialized parts for the action. In 1991 Heather Chambers (now Fandrich) joined Fandrich Design, Inc., the corporation formed to hold the license rights and promote the action, as the executive director and everything else to do with the business end. After being turned down at the last minute in the spring of 1991 by a manufacturer who had demonstrated serious interest for a while, the idea seemed to appear simultaneously in the minds of Darrell, Chris, Ed, Heather and Delwin and Barbara Fandrich, Darrell's brother and sister-in-law (who had wanted to start their own piano company anyway) to have Del design and build a piano using the Fandrich Vertical ActionTM. Del and Barbara with Ed's support founded the Fandrich Piano Company, They chose Hoquiam, Washington as their business location and went into production with the Fandrich Piano in 1992. The prototype Fandrich piano was introduced at the 1992 NAMM Show in Anaheim (the annual musical instruments trade show). This is the piano reviewed in Larry Fine's 1994 edition of The Piano Book.
The Fandrich piano was very well received and the company immediately began receiving orders, including a sale, sight unseen, to George Harrison, formerly of the Beatles. Unfortunately the startup of a piano manufacturing company was a gargantuan task and the piano was very expensive to build. Chris Trivelas worked at the factory for a time and then dropped his involvement with the project in 1992. Del and Barbara gave all they had to it, sold all 97 pianos built and had orders waiting, but decided to go out of production in 1994. Darrell and Heather are very grateful to them for taking the risk of introducing a new piano action and doing a great job of promoting it.
Darrell and Heather opened Fandrich & Sons Pianos in Seattle in 1993, originally to sell Fandrich pianos. In 1994 they decided to start buying new pianos, installing the Fandrich Vertical ActionTM and selling them under the Fandrich & Sons name. They also started offering the action in the Wilhelm Steinberg upright pianos from Germany they had discovered at the 1994 NAMM Show. Del Fandrich founded Pianobuilders NW in Hoquiam, WA and rebuilds grand pianos from around the country. Both Fandrich brothers teach at Piano Technician Guild Conventions and are published in the Piano Technician Guild Journal (Del more frequently than Darrell), which continues to create a certain amount of confusion about how many Fandrichs there are and which one does what.
Fandrich & Sons Pianos has continued to build and sell pianos with the action, as well as other pianos, here in the Seattle area and around the country, and to promote the action by exhibiting every year at the NAMM Show and PTG conventions. The experience of building 50 or so actions by hand has provided Darrell with a very valuable education about just what he created and what to do with it. As a result the action has been refined for significantly improved performance, parts design, installation and regulation procedures. In April of 2000 Darrell traveled to the Wilh. Steinberg Company in Eisenberg, Germany where he built a prototype 49" Steinberg upright with the Fandrich Vertical ActionTM, which was then exhibited at Messe Frankfurt (the annual international music trade show held in Frankfurt). The Fandrich Vertical ActionTM was very well received at the show, receiving write-ups in both Dutch and French music magazines. While at Messe, Darrell found a wonderful 50" upright manufactured by the KlimaTM Company in the Czech Republic that seemed as if it were designed for the Fandrich Vertical ActionTM. We now order 25 of these pianos at a time, equipped at the KlimaTM factory with the Fandrich Verical ActionTM manufactured and assembled by RennerTM. We are selling these with the Fandrich & Sons name. The first of these pianos reached us in April 2001 and are now available with only a 2-3 week ordering time.
Darrell has refined the action to the extent that as of January 2003 he declares it superior to the grand action in six ways:
- Faster repetition
- Less internal friction
- Less lost motion (dynamic and static)
- Takes half the time to regulate
- Regulation lasts considerably longer
- Parts last considerably longer
Over the next 1-2 years we will be training the KlimaTM Piano Company staff to complete the pianos at their factory. They will then be able to begin distributing Fandrich & Sons uprights with the Fandrich Vertical ActionTM to dealers around the world.
Be sure and continue to check this page periodically for new developments . . .
|
|
| Copyright 1997-2010 Fandrich Design Inc. All rights reserved. |
 |
|
