Buying A Used Piano 2

After you’ve found where to look in your area for used pianos (newpaper and online classifieds, piano stores, etc,) and gotten a general idea of which brands you’ll be sampling, here’s what you must consider next:

Age & Quality:
Rule # 1 – buy the newest, most reputable used piano you can afford. When you start your search, you’ll see advertised pianos as old as 120 years, with obscure brand names on the fallboard and very questionable condition. You’ll also see pianos from well-reputed manufacturers that are less than 40 years old, and everything in between. Try to hone in on the newer better quality instruments, and skip over any old clunker built prior to WWII (even if the wood-carving is ornate & gorgeous…I know it’s tempting!)

The simple fact is, while the structure of a piano (the cabinet and plate) may still be intact after 60 years, the inner parts won’t be. They have a given “shelf-life.” Even if not played that much, most of the critical inner parts – the hammers, dampers, bass strings, and various key & action felts – will certainly be worn out and need replacing. So even if they’re selling a 1915 upright from a reputable manufacturer for just a couple hundred bucks, or even giving it away, you’ll be into it for $1200 to $2000 once you replace all the defunct & decrepit components.

Better to stick with one that’s used, but not that used. Say, a Baldwin or Yamaha or other well-known brand, built no earlier than 1960. Any piano this young will, most likely, have hammers, dampers and strings that are still intact, a soundboard that hasn’t started to flatten out yet (see our earlier posts, "The All-Important Soundboard" and "Soundboard Racks & Cracks") and most important, a tight pin-block.

WIll It Hold A Tune?
A piano is useless if it can’t hold a tune. The tremendous tension on each string is held in place by a tuning pin driven into a multi-laminated wooden block called the pin-block or pin-plank. If the tuning pins have worked loose in the wood, or worse, if the pin-block, due to age and dryness, has started to form cracks running through the tuning pin holes, that piano is toast. Well not entirely toast; you could restring the entire instrument with a fresh new wooden pin-block, but that’s a major undertaking, and usually cost-prohibitive for any used instrument except finer old grands that will be worth tens of thousands once rebuilt.

Unless it was left outdoors or subject to huge abuse, it’s rare to find any piano only 50-years-old or less, with seriously worn out parts or a loose or cracked pin-block. So play it safe…find a “newer” used piano built by a well-known company. The seller may ask as much as $700 to $1500 for, say, a well-cared-for Baldwin or Yamaha built in 1973, but you’ll save tons of money and aggravation in the end, over that bargain-basement $150 old clunker at the thrift store. Just say pia-”no”

Of course, sometimes people see some beautiful hand-carved full upright built in 1901, and, in spite of the warnings about pianos this old, they just gotta have it. Which brings us to the single most important rule in purchasing ANY used piano. Take a fine piano technician with you to appraise it’s condition and value. I cannot stress this too much. There are too many critical factors you won’t know to look for, and won’t have the proper tools to test even if you did find them, and, just to save the technician’s small service fee, you’ll end up buying trouble. I can’t tell you the number of sad clients calling me AFTER they bought a used piano, to say it’s full of problems, sometimes thousands of dollars worth, when they should have called me BEFORE buying. Pay a tech to come with you and check it out, period.

For more check out these related posts

• Buying A Used Piano 1