The website is edited by Larry Fine, an author of “The Piano Book,” a much-lauded resource for prospective piano owners.) (That bit of wisdom comes from the used-piano tutorial video hosted on. Pianos that live in areas with extreme humidity swings are more prone to cracking, which is why some experts warn against buying older pianos in the eastern United States, for instance. The pins hold the strings at the proper tension for extended periods - unless the block is cracked. Altenburg posted a video on his website,, explaining how nonexperts can inspect a piano’s soundboard and the bass and treble bridges.īut even if those look fine, there could be hidden problems with other parts, like the wooden blocks that secure the tuning pins. “Unless you know these things, you wouldn’t even know what to look for.”
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“It’s really like buying a used car,” Mr. Crucial parts can fail and, to untrained eyes and ears, the piano could appear fine. Altenburg said that in past generations, pianos were as central to family entertainment as televisions are today, but as that tradition fades further into oblivion, heirloom instruments often suffer from neglect. But even among those brands, prospective buyers are likelier than ever to find instruments that aren’t worth salvaging. When selecting a used piano, my panelists said, it’s fine to be drawn to the better names, like Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Chickering, Baldwin and Knabe, among others.
![baldwin digital piano 20 years old baldwin digital piano 20 years old](https://www.lindebladpiano.com/img/_files/y114.jpg)
and Barb Blair, author of “Furniture Makeovers” (Chronicle), and founder of Knack Studio in Greenville, S.C. Fred Altenburg of Altenburg Pianos in Elizabeth, N.J. My advisers included Amy Tiernan, a piano technician and restoration specialist at Doghouse Pianos in Pawcatuck, Conn.
![baldwin digital piano 20 years old baldwin digital piano 20 years old](https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/hagAAOSwWf1gQWhb/s-l300.jpg)
But I’d have endured far less angst, and gotten more piano for my money, if I had listened to the experts before leaping at my “bargain” discovery. My tune is not quite a dirge, I suppose, since this piano is actually an improvement on the troll it displaced from my living room. So gather ’round my 133-year-old Steinway upright, and hear a little ditty about a man with a laptop, a rental van and impulse-spending issues. And then there’s the guy who actually went out of his way to buy one that’s not worth bragging about. Fewer own one that’s not worth bragging about. Even these days, when cheap secondhand pianos are in plentiful supply, having been tossed aside to make way for compact, sophisticated keyboards, not many people can brag about owning a Steinway.