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Advice on buying a Piano

Victorian pianos have lovely cases, but do they make good instruments. Which are the best second hand pianos. What is the difference between a Yamaha and a Kemble etc.

The musical tones of a piano are produced by felt covered hammers striking steel wires (strings) when a key is pressed.............................more

Question and answer forum where Richard will try to answer your questions about choosing and buying a piano. Send your question by email to Richard at:

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Kawai’s Guide to Excellence

A grand piano is an investment of a lifetime. Chosen wisely, it can offer a lifetime of unmatched enjoyment in return. The selection of a grand piano can appear to be a daunting task at first, until one breaks it down into a step-by-step process.

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Kawai Grand Pianos

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Stools

Victorian pianos have lovely cases, but do they make good instruments? What do the terms over-damped, under-damped, straight strung, and overstrung mean? When I look at second hand pianos they seem to be very old or c1960s to 1980s , why is this?

Lets look at some second hand piano categories and try to unravel the mysteries.

VERY OLD UPRIGHT PIANOS - pre 1890

These pianos will often have fret work front panels with silk cloth behind, places for candle sconces (sometimes still attached), and probably the very top lid will be one piece hinged at the back edge. The examples that have survived often look like nice quality pieces of furniture and often have burr wood grain. Occasionally they have turned (grand piano like) legs under the keybed each end of the piano. Musically they are very poor and should be avoided unless you just want to look at them.

OLD UPRIGHT PIANOS - c1890 to 1900

Pianos at the end of the victorian era can be identified in various ways. They nearly always have candle brackets or evidence of where they were once fitted to the front panel as you can see where the screw holes have been filled in. They often have quite grained wood cases although on the cheaper built pianos this grain is usually false and if you look closely you can see that it has been applied by ink in a glaze the way that modern paint effects are applied to kitchen cupboards etc. Inside the piano you will see that usually the tuning pins are driven into a piece of wood that you can see rather than it being obscured from view by the metal frame, and the metal frame itself stops short and only comes up as far as the bottom edge of this wood (called the pin block or wrest plank). In most cases these pianos will have what is called an overdamped action which can be identified by the vertical damper wires which hang in front of the action (looking like a bird cage) just behind the front panel of the piano. They are attached to the dampers which themselves hang from a flat piece of wood about two inches wide running across the top of the action. You can see this if you lif t the top lid and look down into the piano. In all later under damped pianos you will not be looking down on this piece of wood and instead you will be able to see the felt covered hammers which fly up to strike the strings when a key is pressed, so there can be no mistaking an overdamped action. Quite often (but not always) these pianos will also be straight strung which means that all of the strings including the copper covered bass strings run vertically downwards from the tuning pins.

There are many pianos falling into this category still in existence but they should be avoided if at all possible for the following reasons:

1. Damping a string near its end in this way is inefficient and the notes do not damp quickly and instead often wine to a stop with a sort of oinking sound, even when new felts are fitted. (Some of the old Bluthner upright pianos do actually work quite well as they had huge pads compared with other pianos but most do not)

2. Straight strung pianos tend to have a poor tone in the bass section as these strings run down to a bridge which is in the corner of the soundboard and therefore not in a very good place for sound transference.

3. If the strings are original they will be stiff and tired resulting in poor tone. The piano may well not be tuned up to concert pitch which will also mean a deterioration in tone and may be incapable of being tuned at the correct pitch if the tuning pins themselves are loose which they often are. Even if they are not it may take two pitch raises and several tunings to achieve tuning stability which will cost £200 +

4. If the action is original then it will be pretty well worn out.

Taking into account all of the above these pianos will do little to inspire and maintain the enthusiasm of a once keen student.

OLD UPRIGHT PIANOS - c1900 - 1910

Much of the above applies to these pianos although the case design is often slightly different as they usually have a separate square section leg each end of the keyboard which drops down to a toe sticking out at the bottom of the piano with a castor underneath it. Whereas the victorian pianos usually have some wood detail under the keyboard each end of the piano which scrolls back to the piano and then protrudes back out again to meet the top of the castor toe. Also there may well not be evidence of candle brackets and the front panel will be plain with perhaps simple square frame panels. Pianos made during this time are some of the last with the overdamped action (Berry pianos did carry on until the 1920s but they are about the only exception). Also when you look inside you may see that the metal frame comes right to the top of the piano although very often if it does you can still see the wooden wrest plank into which the tuning pins go - it is sometimes painted gold to match the colour of the frame, but you will see large windows in the metal frame enabling sight of this wooden pin plank. Some pianos from this era are over strung with under damped actions. If you look at the copper covered bass strings in an over strung piano you will see that they go across the piano from left to right and actually cross over the unwound treble strings. This means that they can be longer as they go across the diagonal of the piano and also lay across a bridge somewhere near the middle of the soundboard giving much better tonal quality. If the action is under damped as in all modern pianos then you will see the damper pads resting against the strings lower down behind the action and there will be no vertical wires in front of the action and no two inch wide piece of wood running across the top of the action.

Some of these pianos make good starter instruments, but only if they are in very good condition which most are not. Unfortunately these days it is not cost effective to spend money restoring these pianos compared with buying a later piano in good condition, so you may be lucky but there are very few good ones around now, and it would be advisable to pay a piano tuner to look at any prospective purchase first.

OLD UPRIGHT PIANOS c1910 to 1939

Piano technology moved on considerably from 1900 to 1920 by which time pianos were made very much as they are made today (i.e. over strung and under damped) and in fact due to the quality of the better pianos of this time some of the best instruments were made in this ‘heyday’ of piano manufacture, particularly the german ones.

Pianos from the 1920s and 1930s will have fairly classic plain cases with over hanging top lids, plain panelled fronts and a separate leg dropping down each end of the keyboard to meet the top of the castor toe sticking out at the bottom. There should be no evidence of candle brackets whatsoever. Inside the piano should be over strung and the metal frame will cover the wrest/pin plank completely and will have individual holes for the tuning pins to pass through so that they can reach the wood behind ( and out of view). Almost always the metal frame will be sprayed gold and in the better quality pianos the makers name will be cast into the frame. A good quality make in good condition from this period can make an excellent buy if you can find one. Even so to beat a cheaper new piano it must be in really good condition and again you would be well advised to ask a piano tuner to look at any prospective purchase.

One extra point to make in this section is that during the late 1920s and 1930s some firms made miniature pianos with ‘drop’ actions which sit lower down in front of the pianists knees. These pianos have top lids which are not much higher than the keyboard and if you lift this up you will see the action mounted low down in the piano BELOW the level of the keys so that the ends of the keys have wires which drop down to link them to the action. These pianos will be over strung and under damped but are to be avoided as they are small = poor tone and the actions are costly to maintain as there is extra work in getting them out of the pianos. Eavestaff made a number of these and from this period they often had slab ends in an art deco style sometimes with chrome flashings and even light bulbs on the tops. Some of them even had the action fitted back to front and are tuned from under the keyboard on one’s knees - they are almost nothing more than toy pianos. Berry made a model which was taller with an over damped action. Don’t buy any of these however nice you think they look.

UPRIGHT PIANOS 1945 to 1970

With the second world war followed by a general shortage of materials not many pianos were made from 1939 to about 1950. During the 1950s and 1960s the syle changed to reflect the ‘new post war era’ . The traditional piano look which is popular again today was out and pianos were streamlined with plain flat panels that had little detail. Very often the top of the sides curve round to meet the very top lid which itself lays inset and does not hang over the sides and front panel. All pianos from this period should be found to be over strung and under damped.

Beware - some pianos from this period are not what they seem. Many companies just after the war when materials were scarce took to ‘modernising’ old pianos. There are many pianos around today that have characteristics of case design from the 1950s but have actually been created by chopping the case of an old piano to achieve this. If you suspect that a piano looks older inside than it does on the outside you may well be right. Look at the sides at the point where they start to curve round to meet the top lid and see if they look as if they have been cut off later in their life (you may be able to see evidence of this from inside the piano). Also look at the hinge on the top lid, has its ends been trimmed off to shorten it? The front panel may well be a piece of stained ply and is sometimes stuck to the back of the original front panel which will show evidence of panel windows from the inside. If the music stand is a flip down type fixed to the underside of the fallboard does it look original? The original stand would have hung from the top of the front panel and you may still see evidence of where the hinges fixed if the back of the front panel was used. If it has legs under the keyboard are they straight or curved, if the latter they are probably replacements. Look under the keybed each end and you may see screw holes or a shadow showing where the original legs used to be fitted. Look at the inside of the piano workings in the light of the above text and be brave enough to form an opinion - you will probably be right in that the piano you are looking at could well be 100 years old and not 50 to 60.

To be continued. If you want a question answered feel free to email Richard at racpianos@tiscali.co.uk

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