🎹Piano Buying Tips: 10 Common Mistakes People Make When Buying A Piano🎹

[Music] hi everyone and welcome to another piano video here on miriam pianos this is going to be a shopping tips video we love doing these videos because we get to draw on all of our years of experience helping out thousands of customers and it certainly has been at this point into the tens of thousands of customers so we'd like to think we know a few things about the process today's video is going to be the 10 mistakes that we most often see shoppers come in and commit well with our help we'd like to think that we avoid having them commit those mistakes but it's so common that it was actually very easy to put this list together so we hope that it's going to be helpful we would encourage anybody who's embarking out on the process of selecting an instrument for their home for their school for their church whatever it may be and we trust that it will be helpful please let us know in the comments if there are some other ones that you know of either from your friends or even your own personal experience that you'd love to share we always like to hear uh things that can help people in the future uh improve their shopping journey so without further ado let's dive right in with our list of mistakes most commonly made when shopping for piano [Music] so the very first mistake that we're going to put on the list here is a common assumption it's really almost a myth but i hear it come out of people's mouths all the time when they're in showrooms and starting their piano shopping journey and it is this there is an assumption that used is always a better value than new there are some times where this is true but there are a whole bunch of other times in which the overall marketplace has already factored in the value you're getting for used versus new certain brands and as long as you're doing your research and understand what the typical let's call it street price is for the instrument you're looking at generally speaking you're always getting what you pay for in other words over the thousands and thousands and thousands honestly well over a hundred thousand piano purchases that are made in north america every single year these things tend to work themselves out in the wash so a used yamaha u1 in a certain age category has a particular market price point and that's because it performs at a certain level compared to other new instruments or other used instruments um you know at a at a varying price point so uh if people think that uh a new 48-inch japanese piano uh is worth nine to ten thousand dollars uh then they might be prepared to pay somewhere between a third to half of that depending on how new it is for a used one and the reason that this doesn't make the used piano twice the value is that all pianos degrade all pianos wear out so there is no such thing as a 20 year old piano that is as good as a brand new piano and that is why you're always getting what you pay for we're not talking about those weird barn finds where somebody has literally not touched an instrument for 20 years obviously if you come across one of those it's the rare exception and sure yeah killer deal but in most cases pianos have received hundreds and thousands of hours of use the hammers are harder they've started to wear down there's more play in the action so it's going to be less responsive it's going to be looser that soundboard has already received decades of tension so the crown is not going to be the same as what it once was which means your dynamic potential is probably degraded as well in some cases as the sustain the tuning stability may be affected and this could be for a variety of reasons the instrument might have gone through a number of humidity cycles and that may have uh you know weakened the wood in the tuning block the lamination sometimes start to loosen up if there's really high levels of variability and temperature and humidity throughout the year where the piano has been kept and then finally and it's not a nothing is the aesthetics and the condition of the instrument if you're investing serious money in anything it always feels better to have that instrument looking great and so it's not an insignificant cost to bring a cabinet back up to new condition whether that's through buffing or something that's a little more complicated or involved to restore an outside finish so all of that put together is to say this as long as you're dealing with known brands and as long as you have researched the street price of the instrument that you are looking at and considering buying generally speaking you're always getting what you pay for which means that used is the value it is it isn't necessarily a better value than getting a well-researched well-shopped new piano next on the list and again we see this all the time the allure of a big fat percentage discount off the list price for the manufacturer this is an old sales technique that stretches across many many industries the piano industry is certainly not immune from this and there's been a lot of good inks built on this subject larry fine talks about this with a high level of articulate detail in several his of his publications but it really comes down to this msrp manufacturer suggested retail price this is a price that the manufacturer issues it is not really measured against any kind of a standard and they're free to set it wherever they want now here's what happens in the marketplace or certainly what i've observed in the marketplace there's almost an inverse relationship between a piano's reputation and quality and how high or high low the msrp is going to be the better the piano and the more established the reputation of that instrument the closer msrp is likely to be to the actual legitimate street market price of that instrument to the point where some instruments literally have no daylight between msrp and what people are actually paying for these pianos for many decades you could say that steinway was the only one who achieved that but there are many other instruments down in the marketplace where that seems to be the case estonia piano for example has msrp set very close to what the market actually pays for these instruments which means not that estonia is overcharging for the piano they are not inflating the msrp to a point where dealers have all this room to discount on the flip side of it you have a situation where lesser known brands and lower quality brands often will dramatically inflate the msrp to achieve two things they're looking to achieve equivalence or the or the perception of equivalence with much more established brands and they do that by sticking a price that sort of artificially elevates them and then second it gives dealers that perhaps are less established and do not have the sales experience to sell using the most basic of tools which is a big fat giant exciting discount and only if you buy today you see this a lot with lesser-known chinese lines or sometimes the new indonesian line that comes out very rarely do you see that type of behavior happening anymore with either north american or european built pianos the market pricing is so well established that people's impression or need for a sense of credible pricing on those instruments really handcuffs the manufacturers in a very good way they can't just suddenly raise the price to increase sales by giving their dealers this extra tool of discount so that second mistake really is don't be allured by a super high discount based on an msrp because there's a very good chance that if you're getting something like 50 percent off msrp that msrp was completely irrelevant to begin with moving along do not underestimate how loud a piano is i cannot tell you how many times every single year we get a call from a customer who was thrilled about their piano purchase only to get it home and two to three weeks later they are begging for some type of a solution because their neighbor in their basement the neighbor next to the home they're in an apartment building or sometimes even family members are absolutely at their wit's end because of the the power and the volume that the piano creates pianos are loud they were built to be loud uh just in front of this video we were measuring in fact how many decibels this instrument gives off even at i would describe a forte range which is not the loudest it gets but something like this [Applause] [Music] do now that peaked at 90 decibels and i wasn't even pushing this instrument to its limits which means we might be able to squeeze close to 95 decibels out of this piano if we really really tried if you were in the depths of a rachmaninoff that's going to be pushing some major major volume don't underestimate that and plan for it if you're in a small space or if you've got neighbors be me you know make sure that you are considering the size of the instrument because that has a direct relationship to the sound and the volume that it produces and be sure to consider other mitigating strategies such as installing silent systems or making sure that you've considered the latest and greatest hybrid digitals which have come a long way and certainly make it onto a musical satisfaction scale that just wasn't possible even a few years ago so consider the volume that you can create without making enemies and make sure your piano purchase is totally aligned with that reality because these things are a lot louder than you think next now this one you wouldn't think i'd have to mention but just as often as we have people calling and looking for strategies to mitigate volume they weren't expecting we get even more calls about this one the piano won't fit measure measure measure this comes up a lot when we're talking about getting pianos into basements or out of basements getting instruments onto second floors these pianos are large they're heavy and you need more than a centimeter of clearance to safely move instruments up and down stairs if you have measured and it's literally going to be within an inch there's a very good chance that you are going to be taking on damage to the instrument or the walls as the movers are struggling to squeeze this thing down a very small space this should be an expectation and it is not a reflection on the moving company that you have selected i have worked with moving companies for close to two decades they really care about the work that they do and i have heard them planning these moves there is a ton of thought that goes into it and no matter how careful they are when you're dealing with something that's slippery uh that's weighing five six seven eight hundred a thousand pounds and you've only got one inch of clearance there's virtually no way that this instrument and the walls are going to be untouched and unscathed so be prepared for that if it really is going to be that tight or secondly make sure that you've truly measured and you're making a decision that makes sense for your home or you know wherever else it's going to go it happens a half dozen times a year where we're having to completely revisit a decision that a customer has made because we simply can't get it into the space that they were absolutely sure that it was going to fit this next one has less to do with a shopping mistake and more to do with a misconception right at the same time as a shopping purchase so i chose to put it onto this list acoustic pianos not so much digitals but definitely acoustic pianos need to acclimatize there is a huge amount of tension on an acoustic instrument and most of the piano is made of wood and iron both of which are materials that tend to swell and shrink and change slightly in their physical properties when you elevate or decrease the humidity levels the humidity and temperature in a warehouse is going to be a little bit different than the humidity and temperature in showroom and almost certainly going to be a little different than where it finally winds up in your house and when the piano gets into your home for the first time there is going to be a period where that instrument is doing some flexing and it there's a quite a long list of organic material in the instrument that is going to change because of the humidity and temperature levels in your home and this often will result in keys that are slightly sticky or a little more stiff than you would expect them to be sometimes it will result in some ringing on a string or a damper that isn't quite damping perfectly these are all signs of an instrument that is generally climatizing it's certainly a good idea to notify your dealer that it's occurring but your first reflex should not be that you have bought a hunk of junk or somebody has just scammed you it is very common and this stretches across all brands by the way it is very common for these instruments to have some of these little corks show up within the first four to eight weeks as the instruments really being played in and it's getting used to a new climate and the bigger the difference between your home's climate and wherever the piano has been in storage or on display the greater the chance that you're going to experience some of these little oddities as the instrument settles in and if the humidity continues to be quite dynamic where the instrument is you can expect a lot of those behaviors to continue i cannot tell you how many times we get calls from very concerned customers and i do get why i'm not suggesting whatsoever that when you're investing in something quite expensive that the concern shouldn't be there but i am hoping that mentioning in this video and a few people will see it perhaps i will keep people from having total worst case scenario nightmares when they see these types of things pop up doesn't mean you bought a bad piano doesn't mean that the piano is defective what it does mean is that it's acclimatizing keep in touch with your dealer your technician you know whoever you've made the purchase through and they will be sure to come in after the instrument has settled in and make some of these fine-tune adjustments moving right along this is one that i wouldn't have even had to mention if we'd made this video 15 years ago or even 10 years ago but the popularity of silent pianos is ever increasing and it makes sense people want to be able to enjoy all of the sonic pleasures of an acoustic piano and they'd also like to be able to uh to play these instruments without making enemies of their friends family and neighbors so it's not surprising that we're seeing so many silent systems installed on acoustic pianos here is something to keep in mind though the mechanical sound of a piano's action is hardly silent yes you are eliminating that 80 decibels of tone that the piano produces when it's striking the strings and the whole you know sound board and the cabinet of the instrument is resonating but there is a fairly marked mechanical noise that the action itself produces and most silent systems have the hammer striking at full velocity some type of a bar that prevents it from hitting the string so between the action which is definitely not silent and the hammer actually hitting something you are not going to be in this nirvana where you've gone from 80 decimals to you know 20. there is still going to be a fairly loud clunk every single time you hit one of those keys and so if you're practicing for an hour or two hours and the expectation had been that this instrument was going to be perfectly quiet some people may be quite disappointed to learn that if you've still got somebody in the room and they're trying to do some sort of a zoom call at the same time it's gonna sound crazy like it's still going to sound very loud very noisy and some people are quite disappointed by this and so what i would certainly encourage is if anybody is considering a silent system please be sure to play it in a showroom take into account and and pay attention to the mechanical sound it's still making and ensure that that meets your expectations of what the silent piano is going to accomplish i can't tell you how many times i've got into a conversation and heard something along this vein i hate japanese pianos they're too tinny the american sound is just a little too brash for me i really prefer the european sound countries don't have sounds there is as much variety in the german piano making industry as there is in the japanese piano making industry and the indonesian piano making industry and if we still had more than two manufacturers in the united states we'd have that variety as well countries have quality standards this part is definitely true when you are competing in a marketplace where your consumer is accustomed to a particular standard of quality you will generally find that all manufacturers uh will rise to the occasion otherwise they simply can't compete and there is some regionality to the level of scrutiny that certain consumers will apply to anything they're buying where you know you have foodie cities and you find that for anybody to be successful in the restaurant business there needs to be a certain level met because everybody's awareness of that quality is just so much higher than in cities where food is not such a focus so not sure if that's the best example but i i hope i'm making my point where you have a very very cultured buying community and i would say that europe is certainly steeped in musical culture and i think the the standards that that buying community would apply uh to the piano manufacturing business may in fact be higher than buying audiences where the level of musical fluency isn't as high or well established you know over multiple generations so german pianos generally are better made and when you make a piano really really well the sound gets cleaner but once you have a clean sound there is still a huge variety of tonal colors and palettes that you can get out of the instrument so you have dark pianos from germany you have very bright pianos from germany you have super colorful pianos from germany and then you have pianos with an incredibly simple tone also from germany the only thing that they have in common is that there is not an abundance of things that are wrong with those instruments so if there is a sound it's a lack of imperfection but i wouldn't say that that's what most people would think of as a sound being associated with a country with the united states i mean an american sound really is just saying sound of the steinway since that's generally speaking what most people associate with american piano building in 2022 there are two smaller manufacturers mason and hamlin is still operating in massachusetts and charles walter is still producing some great instruments um but the steinway sound really is what people think of the american sound and japanese sound you've got kauai and yamaha really are the two major exporters out of japan there's a few other domestic producers in japan but we don't hear much about them here in north america and kawhi and yamaha has two very different sounds the scale tensions are slightly different the way that they pack the hammers are a little bit different and so the color variation is is all over the place so all i would say is if you've had a friend or perhaps a teacher or somebody uh trying uh you know earnestly trying to assist uh by giving you the guidance that don't buy from this country or that country because that country has the sound i'm afraid that's not entirely a reliable piece of information you're going to want to play a wide variety of pianos and resist the temptation to lump them by region or by country you'll be doing yourself a much better service of just simply associating a sound with the manufacturer versus the country they're from next on the list and this comes up all the time grand pianos are not automatically better than upright pianos if you are in the market for an instrument considering both there are many instances where the quality of the materials and the execution of design on an upright piano will produce on many fronts a more preferable musical experience than a grand piano of the same price it's far from an accurate scale but what i have found in a very loose sense is if you want to buy a grand piano that is exactly the same fit and finish material quality design sophistication and let's just say overall musical satisfaction you need to approximately double your budget from what you would have been looking at for an upright to achieve the same thing if you are looking at a twenty thousand dollar upright piano you are probably going to have to spend at least forty to fifty thousand dollars to get a grand piano that would have had the same quality sound board the same number of hours of regulating that instrument same quality of the bass strings same sophistication of the bridge system and the up-to-date-ness of the scale design if you're looking at a 5 000 upright piano then a 10 11 or 12 000 grand piano is legitimately a similar quality in a grand and you are going to get the aesthetic so if the option truly is between say a five thousand dollar upright or a ten to twelve thousand dollar grand um i would say that the grand is still going to be an equal or perhaps preferable choice because you do get a slightly more open sound and the benefit of the look but don't assume that simply choosing a grand over and upright in all cases is always going to result in a better musical experience there's definitely going to be this delta in budget that you have to kind of grapple with and a decision needs to be made early on in the shopping process how important the look of the grand piano is and truly what the budget overall needs to be and if the aesthetic is going to be important make sure that that's just an honest acknowledgement with you or whoever is making a decision with you and just stick with grand but don't do it with the kind of misconception in your mind that you're buying a grand because it's of course the superior musical instrument really not the case in many instances this one is a classic don't buy an upright piano under 48 inches if you are going to use it for any serious playing i'm not exactly sure where the 48 inch mark really came from but i suspect it originated from the popularity of the yamaha u1 in the 1970s and 1980s which happened to be 48 inches 48 inches is not a particularly common size in european piano building where all of this got started in the first place 118 centimeters up to probably a maximum about 120 centimeters is a very popular size in european piano making and a lot of very successful scale designs and extremely satisfying high level music making occurs on finely made upright pianos in the 118 centimeter range which would be about 47 inches i used to have 118 centimeter german upright piano which was absolutely lovely and i adored that instrument you'll know from a separate video that of course switched to a hybrid instrument but not really the point for the sake of this video um it was under a 48-inch piano and i have actively endorsed the purchase of many many pianos under the 48-inch mark for musician friends of mine who have just absolutely loved those pianos uh it is true that a 48 inch piano is going to perform a lot differently than a 44 inch piano or a 43 inch piano but having that 48 inch mark be an absolute arbitrary line in the sand which you won't go under even by a centimeter or two is going to dramatically and i would believe unfortunately reduce the options that you're looking at and possibly deprive you of a really phenomenal choice you get exactly the same thing sometimes with grand pianos and you'll have families or you know buying committees come in and they'll have been given the advice or the suggestion by somebody don't buy anything under six feet and somebody on the committee or somebody within the buying group will take that absolutely literally and all of a sudden pianos in the 5 foot 10 range 5 foot 11 range are being discounted because they don't quite make this arbitrary mark which is crazy there are 5 foot 10 pianos with longer strings and larger sound boards than six foot pianos out there and to discount it because of a small variation below that arbitrary mark is is discounting a instrument that is probably a superior musical piano so be aware that these lines in the sand need to be treated with some flexibility let's call it you don't want to go too far below the six foot mark or before the 48 inch mark because there certainly is some truth to the approximate size that it references but using it as an absolute line in the sand doesn't make a lot of sense and our very last item on the list of mistakes that i often see buyers make when they're out in a shopping journey for piano and this one's a little touchy i might get into trouble here but it's my honest feedback and i've really seen it mess up the process multiple multiple times there is of course nothing wrong with many different family members if it's a family or if it's a buying group or whatever it is collaborating on getting some parameters on what this purchase is going to look like what is the budget that we have available what is the size that we have room for what is this going to be used for and how does that influence the features we're looking at all of those things are great and uncollaboration often is a wonderful way to arrive at a set of final instruments to choose from but all of that feedback is going to narrow things down to a small handful of instruments that are really great candidates this is where having multiple decision makers at the end of the road can be quite problematic because choosing a piano after you've made sure that you're in the right category in the right budget is as personal as choosing a bottle of wine or a meal off a menu and it's very seldom that you're going to have people who feel exactly the same way about a piano for exactly the same reasons and somebody's got to take the lead and be able to say this is the instrument that really resonates with me that i really feel amazing about that i'm going to want to be at every single day even if i can't quite describe why it connects to me somebody needs to be designated or somebody needs to take the lead at that very last stage and be the one to musically crown the winner because the number of times where i have seen spouses in disagreement and particularly where one of the spou one of the partners doesn't even play the piano winds up turning what has been a fun process up until that point into a fairly toxic and dysfunctional one and in the worst cases i've seen it completely derail the entire purchasing process all together it makes no sense for the person who's going to be playing the piano the most to feel like they're having to choose the one that they don't resonate with the most for considerations that the other person is bringing to the table and this is after budget and size and features have already been decided on so i realize this is a bit of a sensitive issue but folks i've seen it happen and so if you are setting out on this journey and you're thinking about how this decision is going to made it is a mere suggestion that somebody is going to have the right to make the musical choice if there is one primary user of the instrument so that's it folks we hope that this list has been super helpful or at least somewhat helpful to anybody out there who is in the process of or about to embark on their journey to buy an instrument as we said in the intro please let us know what you thought of the video and contribute any new thoughts and ideas to future videos or more myths and mistakes that you're aware of that people are making out there it's always kind of fun to hear those stories and if you haven't subscribed yet we would really encourage you to do so we love to have our community continue to grow it's just growing at an absolutely phenomenal rate it's so cool to see those subscribers continue to tick up hit that notification bell as well because youtube will let you know every single time we come out with a new video which is usually a couple of times per week have yourselves a great day my name is stu harrison we'll see you again soon [Music]

Channel: Merriam Music

Views: 62,997

Keywords: buying a piano, piano buyers guide, piano buying tip, mistakes people make when buying a piano, piano, acoustic, digital, yamaha piano dealer, piano (musical instrument), how to buy a piano, buying a keyboard, top ten, top 10 piano newbie mistakes, 10 mistakes first time piano buyers make, 10 mistakes when buying a piano, top ten mistakes, Piano Buyer's Guide, mistakes buying a piano, 10 mistakes, merriam music, merriam pianos, merriammusic

Id: fm_IAYV6Xgk

Length: 32min 42sec (1962 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022