Tags for Forum Posts: piano
Possibly not what your daughter or her piano teacher would say but at this stage I would get her an electronic keyboard - cheaper, easier to maintain, takes up less space and easier to get rid of if she loses interest, which happens a lot!
There was one for sale a few weeks ago in Raising My Voice Foundation. It was a locally made one, Hornsey Rd I think. It was about £125 as far as I can remember.
It is all about condition, and that can be judged by the tone, which I'm sorry to say is going to be fairly difficult for you to judge if you are not a pianist yourself. You need to listen out for a sound that is not tinny or inconsistent from one note to the next. The best I can suggest is that you play every single note on the piano carefully, one by one, and listen/feel for keys that are very different to others. You may find one or two dodgy notes in the very highest or lowest registers, which is not too much of a deal-breaker for a beginner's piano, but if there are some keys in the middle registers which get stuck, or which don't sound until your finger has gone almost all the way down, that is a sign of other problems that you would do well to avoid.
As for eBay tips: most people selling on eBay seem to assume that their buyers are mostly interested in the piano as an item of decorative furniture ("Lovely colour!" "Will look beautiful in your living room!" etc when the poor instrument is in a terrible clapped-out condition inside) so I would completely ignore the photos, and go and play the thing. Better yet, see if you can take someone with you who can play the piano who will be able to give you an indication of whether or not any of the keys are sticking, or there are any problems or inconsistencies with tone.
Liza,
I got my piano from Reid's (he's called Johannes because he's German) about eighteen months ago - I was fortunate enough to get him as a very generous wedding present from my parents, so I was lucky not to have to think so much about the price. However, I had been considering buying one myself prior to that and weighing that plan up against getting my childhood piano moved from my parents' house and decided that it would be more cost effective to buy a "new" piano (read: slightly less clapped out) than move the old one, which had already spent 40 years in Swansea, moved to Coventry when I started learning and then moved to Derby when my parents moved. That piano had been in our family its whole life and had been looked after - it ended up being below concert pitch, but was good enough for me to get beyond Grade 8. I started learning on a keyboard (not a weighted one) and my playing improved rapidly once the piano arrived and I now have a possibly slightly over the top hatred of weighted keyboards as piano substitutes - as Empyrean says, they do have their place, just not in my house! The best thing to do is to ask how regularly it is played. If they say it hasn't been played for years, it's unlikely they've kept up with the tuning while it hasn't been used and, as others have said, you need one that has been properly maintained or you'll just have a list of problems that require money and effort to solve (or a pile of junk that you then need to get rid of). If it used to be played regularly until little Johnny gave up playing last year (or until someone passed away - that's often a reason people get rid of pianos, sad as it is to say), then it's worth going through the exercise that Empyrean suggests of playing each note carefully. As long as you bear these things in mind, it is worth keeping an eye out on freecycle as well as eBay, but be aware that some of them are on there because they are only worthy of Reid's scrapyard.
Good luck in your quest!
If you search the Ebay local bargains option, you'll see pianos going for 99p. The only thing is you have to collect the piano.
I quite agree, for heavens sake NOT an electronic one.
© 2024 Created by Hugh. Powered by
© Copyright Harringay Online Created by Hugh