Acoustic piano
How to choose and buy it ?
To buy a piano - call a specialist:
It looks like repetetif, but one more time, the best advise is - call your piano turner...If you really must choose your piano by yourself, without a tuner, here is some practical advice:
Do not buy a piano that is more than 20 years old or which has been heavily used, such as a rental piano or a music school piano. To know the age of the piano, you can use the serial number. This number is found in the interior or back of the piano. You will find catalogs at piano stores and from piano tuners. For most known brands this information is also found on websites. Useful links:
Yamaha / Bechstein / Steingraeber & Söhne / Bösendorfer / Steinway & Sons / Other brands
Apart from some very important brands, don’t buy pianos from before the 20th century. They are certainly very beautiful on the exterior, but you risk great disappointment with the sound quality. Piano manufacturing has made significant progress since those years.
Don’t buy a very cheap acoustic piano. A good piano commands a certain price. For the top new acoustic pianos, low-end pianos below £2500 are not recommended. At these prices one will find used instruments more interesting pianos.
For an upright piano two types of mechanical workings are significant: Renner and Yamaha. To determine which type of mechanic is in the piano, open it and look for the manufacturer’s inscription. For Yamaha pianos the most interesting models are U1 and U2. It is possible to find very good used pianos with these models. The U3 pianos have a slightly heavy mechanic.
Some practical tests for choosing a piano:
- Try to play very softly to see if you can get very soft sounds. Then more and more loud, you can distinguish at least a dozen sound possibilities with the same key.
- Lift the cover off the piano and look at the crossing of the ropes. This crossing corresponds from E to E flat. The sound should be pretty close between these two notes. This test checks the regularity of the piano.
- Test the repetition of the notes: repeatedly press a key very quickly. The key should not stick and the repetition should be clear.
