The
Pianet is a type of
electro-mechanical piano built by the
Hohner company of
Trossingen,
West Germany from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. The designer of the early Pianet models was
Ernst Zacharias, basing the mechanism closely on a 1920s design by
Lloyd Loar. The Pianet was a variant of the earlier reed-based Hohner electric piano the
Cembalet which, like the Pianet, was intended for home use. Hohner offered both keyboards in their range until the early 1970s. The Pianet production consisted of two distinctly different mechanism groups with characteristically different sound. The first group, lasting from introduction to 1977, had ground stainless steel reeds, a pick-up using variable capacitance, and leather faced activation pads. The second group from 1977 until the end of production used rolled spring-steel reeds, electro-magnetic pick-ups, and moulded silicone rubber activation pads.