Pianos by Fandrich & Sons

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Home of the one and only Fandrich Vertical Action that plays like a grand.

Fandrich & Sons Pianos opened in a small store in Seattle, WA in 1993. It is family owned and operated, since 2000 at our home on 5 acres in the woods near Stanwood, WA. The rise of the internet allowed us to move home, where we have our 2000 sq.ft. workshop and our studio with the finished pianos on display.
	Darrell Fandrich, RPT studied violin and piano as a child. He became interested in how pianos worked, and at age 16 studied piano technology at the University of Minnesota's McPhail School of Music, which began a lifelong fascination with how to make pianos more musical. He has put his degree in mechanical engineering to use in developing several innovations that have received significant recognition. See Darrell's resume for more details.
	Heather Fandrich began piano lessons at age 5. She studied piano for 8 years, but with less and less diligence, which she now realizes was largely due to an uninspiring practice piano. She got her BA and master's degree in social work and worked in the juvenile justice system for 28 years. She and Darrell met because her father, Robert Jenny, wrote Darrell's first two US patents. Only after she and Darrell were married did she learn that pianos were in her genes--her great, great grand-father was Frederick Mathushek, a noted piano designer and builder in the late 1800's. Her first experience with a musical piano was playing the prototype of Darrell's Fandrich Vertical Action™. Now she fervently wishes she had grown up with a musical piano, as she knows the results of her musical studies would have been quite different.

"Last Sunday morning while seated at the Fandrich & Sons grand piano which you crafted for our church, I rendered one of the most sublime performances of Cesar Franck's Panis Angelicus in the history of the world! I was deeply moved in the midst of this beautiful musical prayer to realize that it was not just me making such a beautiful sound...every one of you who touched that fine instrument in its conception and fabrication had a hand in that particular piece of music last Sunday....You were not there to witness the hush and the grandeur of the moment....But I must say 'thank you' many times over for the pride and brilliance you put into your work."

-- Cass Seely
pianist at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, regarding their Fandrich & Sons 213HGS (7'grand).