Fort Worth Piano Tuning
Piano Buyers Guide
Buying a new or used piano is a really important purchase. Pianos can be very expensive. Buying a used one and knowing what to look for can be a daunting task. We think the fast majority of people who go out looking for a piano to buy are under prepared for the task ahead of them, so we created this page as a guide into what to look for when buying a new or used piano.
Let's start with a little information on why pianos are priced the way that they are. When you go and meet with a piano dealer or a seller of second hand pianos the price is relative to the quality of the build and brand of the piano. So let's say you walk into a shop and see two pianos that look relatively the same but one is 1000$ and the other is 3000$, generally the 3000$ instrument is going to have more value and be the one with the better raw materials like wood and the actual parts inside. The crafts people that built the 3000$ piano most likely handled that task with care and put the raw materials inside. These better raw materials are going to be better seasoned, and will actually sound better for longer and may even improve in sound quality down the road if maintenance and tuning are done regularly and the piano is kept away from the elements and especially humidity. Better raw materials with also keep the piano in tune longer as the soundboard is of higher quality. Lets start with new pianos. Say you just want to skip all of the dealing and just go right for a shiny brand new piano for your son or daughter, even for yourself what should you look for? You want to know the difference between a 1000$ piano and a 10,000$ piano. The first things you want to consider are the actual structure of the piano. In particular the soundboard and the wood frame of the piano. You need to ask the shop owner what kind of wood these elements are made out of. Denser woods like like spruce and maple are harder and are going to be more strong to hold the tension of the strings. Remember, pianos are holding an enormous amount of tension at all times. Just one piano string holds approximately 160 pounds of tension. And there are 230 strings inside a typical piano. That's a lot of Force! You want a structure and a material that is going to be able to maintain that tension and stay in tune for years. The stronger the wood the better the quality of the piano. Next let’s talk Piano plates. Inside every acoustic piano is a cast iron plate. The plate acts as a scaffolding of the piano and holds all the tension of the strings. When buying a piano the main thing you want to be paying attention to is where and how well the manufacturers drilled and placed the holes in the plate. You want to be looking for neatness and make sure that every hole is even and in scale and lines up with the wood structure that the plate is attached to. Higher quality pianos are going to be noticeably more need and have a handcrafted look to them. If the piano was made in an assembly line or machined without care these are the areas where you are going to be able to spot a low quality of build right away. 
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If you are not looking to buy your piano from a dealer and are looking to buy from a private owner like someone on craigslist or a sales website or ebay, a super cheap or even free piano is almost always of low quality and will often have serious issues with the action that will sometimes cost more to fix than the total value of that piano. Unless you are an expert don't think that you will have much luck buying a piano of good quality without being able to see it in person first.
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The most important part that you want to look for when purchasing a new piano is the pin block. This is a part of the purchasing process the we at Fort Worth Piano Tuning always see people skip on and the main reason is that if you just look at a acoustic piano form the outside you will not be able to see the pin blocks. You need to open the piano u and take a look at what is inside in order to check the pin blocks. The trouble is, a lot like going to a car dealership and asking the salesman or saleswoman to open up the hood for you to go and noodle around in the engine it is often uncomfortable to ask. But it is absolutely necessary to do so if you want to guarantee that you are buying a high quality piano for the price you are paying. When buying a new piano you are looking at same thing as the build and sound board, you are looking for dense woods, and also ply of those woods. A pin block is a series of sheets of wood usually pressure glued together. This is the part of the piano that hold the pins in, which then hold the string tension against the plate. If the piano is poorly build or the wood is not a hardwood, the piano will not stay in tune. Not even regular maintenance will be enough to keep the piano in tune for more that a few days or weeks and eventually the lack of strength in the tension holding pin block can even cause problems with the piano’s regulation.
The next thing you must know before you buy a piano is about a certain type of piano build that was popularized in the 1930’s and was manufactured up until recent times. This is the Spinet Piano. Spinets were designed with cheapness and portability in mind. The Spinet is a very short piano. Shop owners wanted to be able to have a piano in the lounge or bar for entertainment but had limited space to put them. The Spinets cramped characteristics and what is sometimes referred to as drop action hammer system are the bane of piano tuners and player world wide. They lend themselves to breaking and are notoriously difficult to work on. Simply put, don't buy a Spinet. If you already own one, consider giving it to an enemy or someone who owes you money.
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Remember: the taller the piano or in the case of a grand the longer a piano, the longer the strings, in which case the more room for the action of the piano to take place. All of the little parts that move and need to be regulated have more room to move and the fuller and better your piano will sound and stay in tune better and have a better tone quality. But how do you tell one from a console? Here is a simple guide to piano height and what it can tell you about your piano.
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Another thing to look at when buying a piano is the string spacing and where certain strings are placed inside the piano. If you look inside and see that the strings and pins holding them are spaced evenly and orderly you can see that it was all built to scale. This is what you want to be looking for. If you see some strings are really close together while others are really far apart, that means that the manufacturer of the piano was not building the structure in a high quality way. That is going to have a big impact on the tone and the tuning and the ability for it to be tuned properly and stay in tune. It could also affect the action of the hammers and the regulation of that action.
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