Useful Piano Buying Tips

  For All Your Piano Related Needs

I've decided to buy a Piano?

Buying a piano can be quite a stressful task and there are many peripherals that need to be addressed. I've put together a check list and a few points to help choose the correct piano for one’s individual needs.

In New Zealand we are cursed with few types of nasty pianos. The first to completely avoid no matter how nice they look is the Victorian Over Damper. Easy to spot, open the top lid and look inside the piano, can you see all the hammers?

If you can’t, then it’s an Over Damper, kick it to the curb!! Over Damper pianos are very old technology, they're extremely sloppy to play and the actions tend to make more noise than the strings.

The second nightmare is harder to spot and at a first glance looks like a very modern piece of furniture they even have beautiful woodwork and glossy mahogany cabinets, beware of these stealthy demons! The piano is from Ireland and bares the name Leiderstrom or Lindiner. The older ones aren’t so bad if all the parts are made of wood, and the action inside is made by Schwander. However the Leiderstrom has no key weights and as a piano I never liked the way they play, the keys are sluggish and tend to get sticky with age. The later models got worse when they used a completely plastic action, even the keys! Over time the plastic breaks down and parts become brittle and start snapping rendering the piano useless as you cannot get parts for them and you can’t give them away. One time I was even paid to take one to the local landfill.

The buyers basic check List

•  Avoid old pianos made before World War II

• Avoid older pianos made in Korea, no matter how good looking they are.

• Looks aren’t everything don’t buy a piano for its looks. A musician needs a musical instrument.

• If the piano you're looking at hasn’t been tuned within two years and sounds bad this is an indication of what it will sound like 6 months after tuning.  It might pay to ask a tuner what they think of your new potential investment.

•  If there are notes on the piano that sound like nasty discords this is an indication of old loose tuning pins, very costly to remedy.

• Pick up the telephone and listen to the dial tone, now play the G just above middle C, it should be roughly the same. If the piano is significantly lower than the dial tone then chances are the temperament of the tuning is flat. I've encountered pianos a major third below A440! That can equate to 3 – 6 tunings to pull the piano back to concert pitch. Not to mention the potential for broken strings at the owners cost. However saying that in most cases the piano has pulled up to pitch fine.

• Open the lid, does the iron plate go all the way to the top of the cabinet? Look carefully some piano makers tried to disguise this by putting thin brass plates over the pin block. Victorian ¾ plates generally fall out of tune faster and tend to be very unstable.

•  Look at the strings, in areas of geothermal activity, Rotorua is a good example. The brass/copper bass strings will tarnish and a black dirty ash appears on the strings and the bass strings will be dead in tone, not good. Also check the condition of the wire if they're rusty this could mean broken strings when the tuner comes to tune your new found nightmare.

• Also look at the tuning pins at the top of the plate. Do the pins have rust on them and are the coils of the string rusty? If there is rust present this is a sign that the piano has been in a damp location or has spent some time on an outside wall. Not in all cases however this could mean the pins could a have a potential to become loose and tuning stability will be compromised.

• Put your thumb on the key fronts in the middle of the keyboard and move them from side to side. Now compare them with the extreme bass and treble, are they all nice and tight? If the key bushings are worn this also can be an expensive repair.

• If in doubt look in your local yellow pages under piano repair and find a tuner near you to appraise the piano for you. There are a few us around, and we're more than happy to help.

Ok that’s a lot of stuff to look for. Well I’ve only just listed the basics. That’s why I recommend that you buy your piano from a piano tuner, it might cost you a little more than you budgeted for but you won’t have a nasty nightmare on your hands.

Size does count

Pianos come in all shapes and sizes, each piano maker over the last two centuries has thought up improvements and innovations to the basic design, some good and some not so good.

The general rule of thumb here is the smaller the piano the shorter the strings, the smaller the tone, generally. Though saying that Yamaha make a small piano with a big tone. Here I 'll show you the basic piano designs and the pros and cons of each design, I’ll start with the smallest.

A typical spinet design

This is an English spinet made by Temple. The action in a spinet is dropped down below the keyboard and is connected to the keys via wire rods called stickers. In my opinion spinets are ok however the key rods, the length of key behind the fallboard, are short and I find that one has to play with a heavy hand. So in a musical sense I find generally that spinets lack expressive dynamics and have a poor bass and thin tone.

On the other hand they are light and easy to move around, and they're a great space saver and don’t dominate smaller rooms.

Consoles and studio uprights

These pianos are by far the most popular but again make sure that the make is a good one. Since the end of WWII European pianos were quite small and conservative and since the mid 50s piano manufacturing had produced some real quality instruments.

A typical English studio upright, a Barratt & Robinson made in the early 60s.

Here's a Japanese Tokai with a composite malteka type finish made in the early 80s.

Inside the modern piano, post 1950 the design of the action and frame have become fairly standard. Most of these modern studio and console pianos are over-strung, this means that the bass strings cross over the treble strings to add length to the bass and tenor strings. String length is important for tone and tuning accuracy.

This is a Yamaha and you can clearly see the bass strings on the left crossing over the treble strings to the right. Cross stringing has been around for a long time some of the older pianos are straight strung this means that all the strings go parallel from top to bottom. This is something to avoid also. Cross strung pianos have a much richer bass and tenor tenor section due to the extra length in the strings as shown in the picture above.

The taller the piano the lager the strings this means a nicer tone, so basically take your time and view at least 5 different pianos and draw your conclusions from this basic guide.

Happy piano hunting :-)