What to Check for When Buying an Old upright Piano

Buying an old upright piano can be a risky purchase.  Think of buying a second-hand car; there are so many things to consider and to the ordinary person, car mechanics is a total mystery. You can end up with a big, costly problem; so it is with an old piano. Before you buy that beautiful old grandmother’s piano in the op shop or agree to the gift of a free one from some, there are things you can check to avoid making a big mistake. Just the cost of having a large, heavy old piano moved professionally will run into hundreds of dollars. And if you make a mistake, you will then have to dispose of it.

The first thing to check is: does your budget allow you to employ a professional piano technician to check the piano and give you an opinion. Most will provide this service for a nominal fee. It will be money well spent. The technician will also likely be the one to tune it if you purchase it.

If doing the check yourself, here are some things to look at:

• What is the condition of the piano case or body. If there are broken legs, pedals or any evidence of the piano being dropped, seriously damaged then you should reject it straight away.
• Play all the keys from bass to treble. See if all the notes work; see if some keys are stiff, don’t move or stick down. These things might be easily fixed by a piano technician at little cost. See if some keys work but there’s no sound; there could be no strings on that note or the hammer is missing.
• Play all the keys again up from the bass and listen if the notes progress in a normal way; the pitch of each note should rise higher than the note before it. If that’s not the case, there may be problems with the tuning pin firmness in the pin block. Pins not holding tension well.
• Next, you need to open up the piano and look inside it’s works. It is assumed you will know how to take off the removable panels and so gain entry inside; it is not difficult. A quick look will usually show the way to open and remove the panels. Be careful not to break the dowels off when tipping panels forward to remove.
• Inside look at the action parts that are activated by pressing the keys. Is everything in order? Look for uniformity, all parts should be lined up fairly well. If parts are out of line, missing or obviously broken, you should reconsider buying the piano. Missing hammers, parts out of adjustment etc all will require money to fix.
• Look at the tuning pins and where they go into the pinblock. Can you see any cracks, large or tiny, in and around the pinblock? Very bad! Don’t take the piano if you have any doubts about these cracks. They can be like an iceberg, behind in where you cannot see, the cracks can run right along from pinhole to pinhole and mean the piano cannot be tuned.
• Look for any cracks in the iron frame and struts.
• Look at the pins and the strings. If they are rusty or grey with oxidation they may well break during tuning. Are any strings missing (more cost)? Are there many shiny new replacement strings or spliced strings? This can indicate breakage tendencies.
• Look at the soundboard to see if there are any cracks visible. Cracks there don’t necessarily mean a bad piano but they may cause buzzes etc.
• Observe the hammer felt and compare the colour to a creamy white (hammers when new). Is there any evidence of insect activity? Eggs, holes or burrows in the felts, felts eaten completely away. Do not buy a piano with moth eaten felts.
• Check again the hammers and see if the striking point of the hammer is a reasonable condition. Old pianos usually have very grooved hammers from long decades of playing. Hammers can be filed back to give better tone – again more expense or live with it.
• Play all keyboard notes again, staccato, to see if they notes repeat well.
• Play a number of notes softly to see if the action is responding to soft play.
• Press the right pedal (sustain) and watch the dampers (behind the hammers) lift off the strings. Does the whole row of dampers lift off? Together? Are any dampers missing?
• Press the other pedals. The hammer row should move forward with the right pedal. The muffler felt should come down and lift away with the middle pedal.

Therefore we strongly suggest hiring a qualified technician to evaluate a piano before buying.