Things to know when buying a piano

Complete Guide on How to buy a piano

The moment of buying a new piano is of great importance for all: either for piano students as beginners, intermediate or advanced.

If you already have the guidance of piano tutors, you are in good hands, but if you are a beginner and you need some advice regarding what to focus on, what to see or what to disregard when buying an instrument, this article is for you.

Suppose you want to buy a new piano and you heard there is a coming auction: this brings more questions than answers as acquiring a piano from an auction can be compared with buying a used car. The elements to consider are vast and if you are not a luthier, you might be entering in dangerous territory, as the experience can quickly become a nightmare if you don’t take a couple of things into consideration.

Let’s start with used pianos:

Carefully see the interior of the piano and look inside to see the general state; don’t mind the dust, but do mind the state of the felts and hammers. Also, you might want to check the brightness of the strings.

Take a look at how old the keys look and play every single one of them; they should sound with even dynamics and tone throughout the keyboard. Furthermore, they should have the same touch and weight as the middle range tends to become lighter with the use than the extreme ranges. This is just for the used pianos.

Now, let’s go to the new ones:

If you are a piano beginner, you should look for upright pianos. I know concert grands look amazing, but even if you have enough budget to buy one, it is not really necessary to do so at the beginning of your piano training, let’s leave that for the future (let’s hope a near one).

Then, we should go into the digital pianos: within this, we have hundreds of brands and models. Which one to choose? The options are so many that we will end up buying the first piano that appears to be pretty or fit into our space at home.

You should consider if the piano has weighted keys and if it has 88 keys and a sustain pedal. For a beginner, that will do; for an intermediate, we should consider the sound quality and the hammers’ action.