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.

"Leather...why do I think of a thick piece of rich brown leather when I play our Fandrich piano? Something about sinking into a chord, reaching the firm bottom of the keys, and feeling there's still...something THERE, some deeper resource of sound, some musical dimension I can still push into. We purchased our brushed mahoghany 6'1" piano over a year ago, and we've had it tuned several times. And now the strings have stretched, and it's settled in, and it's a wonder. You get the glistening sound with high scale runs, the clarity of the middle range, and the sense of falling off something when you hit big bass octaves. I haven't the exquisite ear that can tell a Baldwin from a Steinway, and those two from half a dozen other brands. I can only say that for the money, our piano can't be beat: in looks and sound, it projects itself like an instrument that is tens of thousands of dollars more expensive. Some friends of ours bought an elegant six and a half foot Steinway; it was grand for a while, but at its best--and it cost twice what ours did--it couldn't match what we've got. So...after a year and a half, no complaints. Much praise to Fandrich & Sons."

-- John Brown
Bellingham, WA