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Upright Piano

One of the more compact versions of the piano that was pioneered by Cristofori so long ago is the upright piano. The major difference between this and the grand is the layout of the strings. In the grand the strings are laid out horizontally, where as in the upright the strings are vertical. This is feasible by a system of springs, although they are not upheld as well as the grand. The springs can wear out making the percussive force of playing the note not as lively as you would like, and eventually they wear out entirely resulting in a flat playing of the note.

The emphasis on these pianos is to make the larger grand more compact. For this reason they have sometimes been nicknamed the upright grand piano, while others refer to them more simply as the upright piano. Since height is the key factor here, there are some customizable options that make it even smaller. Typically speaking the cabinet has to be 42 to 45 inches tall to accommodate the strings. There was some advancement in a minimized hammer system that reduced this by a few inches, but generally 42 is recognized as the lower limit in the size of the pianos since the string lengths has a direct correlation to the frequency of the sound that is played, there is no physical way to minimize this short of digitizing the already compact upright piano, although this is done.

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