Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: What happens to old pianos? I’m going to tell you right now that what I’m going to share with you today is very disturbing. For those of you who love piano like I do, seeing what I’m going to show you is really heartbreaking.
There are some companies, like Living Pianos, that restore old pianos.
Most companies that restore pianos specialize in Steinway and maybe a couple of other brands. Used Steinways command more money than other brands because everybody sees them on the concert stage. Everyone knows they are high-quality pianos. But most people don’t know about other high-quality piano brands that were around in the United States when there were hundreds of companies making pianos in this country. And many of them were great instruments.
The problem is that restoring a piano is extremely expensive.
Many top piano restorers get between $30,000 and $40,000 to completely rebuild a piano to make it like new again. As a matter of fact, I took a personal tour of Steinway. The CEO and all the people treated me like royalty there. They gave me a grand tour of the entire facility. And when we passed their rebuilding shop, they said, “It’s a lot easier to build pianos than to rebuild them.” Pianos that have never had any work done to them are actually easier to rebuild than pianos where some work has been done along the way because you don’t know the specifications of the matching parts.
There are resources for old pianos, such as PianoAdoption.com.
PianoAdoption.com is a great place to go if you have a piano you just want to get rid of and you don’t have the heart to see it go to the dump, which is what happens to many old pianos, unfortunately. This is something that happens on a regular basis all around the country. It’s heartbreaking to see what happens when pianos need more work than they’re worth. I have a friend who has a piano business. He revealed to me that this past year, believe it or not, he had to trash 170 pianos of his that he had in storage because there was no way he was going to be able to restore them.
You actually have to pay money when you have an old piano that you can’t get rid of.
You would think somebody would want these instruments. If you have a piano that looks gorgeous, somebody might want it just for the furniture. And there are some pianos that can be restored, thank goodness. But for every piano we take in to restore, sadly, we have to turn down dozens that just aren’t worth it because of compromises in the fundamental structure. There’s only so much you can do to bring life to older pianos. Some are excellent candidates, and you can get stellar results. Others, you just can’t get life out of them anymore. Sadly, those pianos end up in the landfill. Sorry to bring you down with this. But the good news is that we and other businesses restore pianos so that we have these treasures from when the United States was the epicenter of the piano industry. Unlike today, when only about 2500 pianos are built each year in North America. That’s why it is our mission to bring life back to old pianos and to spread the joy of the piano to you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Supplemental Content:
New York Times Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html
4 thoughts on “What Happens to Old Pianos?”
Very sad to see pianos trashed- what is sad to me is to watch you tube videos when people go in abandoned houses and see perfectly good pianos just sitting there
The reality is that it can cost thousands of dollars to restore a piano, and hundreds of dollars just to get it removed. So this kind of thing is quite common unfortunately.
A few years ago, on the wooded grounds of the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, my friend Howie Johnson—also the festival host and venue owner —at my suggestion, created a piano garden, partially burying a number of dead pianos of various styles beneath the trees. I, the festival, and Howie have all moved on, but I am quite sure that the frames and various other pieces of the pianos are still there, likely housing the local squirrel and critter population.
This is truly a piano graveyard!