You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Our First Voice Question! Old Uprights - #43

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Peter and Adam take a voicemail question from listener, Dan, about replacing his old upright piano. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to answer our very first voice question we've received here at the You'll Hear at podcast. This is a very exciting, momentous day here in the history of the You'll Hear It podcast. Our first voice question. That's right. This takes me back to the old days with the answering machine when you have the cassette there and you come home to some messages. So let's get right to it and listen to this question from Dan. Hi, Peter and Adam.

I wonder if you could talk briefly. briefly about pianos. I had the unfortunate experience this week of having a piano tuner technician come out to the house, and he pronounced that my 100-year-old upright was really not worth tuning or investing anything else in. So I'm thinking about starting to shop around for probably an electronic digital piano, And just wondered what your thoughts are on that. I'm sure a lot of us that listen to your podcast are saddled with old uprights. I'd like to get your views on it. Anyway, I got an autopsy on my piano this week, so I've had it 45 years.

So it's kind of a little tough to give it up, but I'm afraid it's time. Thank you. All right. Great. Thanks, Dan. Great question. And so when we talk about older pianos and, Adam, I think both of us have been through and even are in possession now of some older pianos.

We're kind of collectors of pianos and pianists, which is a funny thing because it's not like collecting a kazoo. We've got, what do we have, four pianos in the studio presently? I don't know, man. We have way too many pianos in here. Yeah, and one of them is a very old upright, actually. That's true. Yeah. So we have some experience with this. But pianos are machines. They're musical instruments first, of course, but they've got a lot of wood. They've got a lot of springs in them. They've got metal. it's a little machine that has all these moving parts

and it eventually wears out unfortunately. Yeah, they're so hard to let go, but even really well-made pianos, eventually they succumb to the elements. I mean, you have so much wood and metal and humidity and temperature can always take its toll. And over the course of, like, Dan's piano he's had for 45 years, you know, that's a typical shelf life, I think,

for a piano to survive. Right. Well, he said it was 100 years old, but he'd had it for 45. Oh, it was it 100 years old? 100 years old, yeah. Well, you got, you'll fill that thing out of it. No, I mean, that's amazing. I mean, actually, I have a weekly gig where I play 100-year-old Steinway upright.

Right. And that thing is dying. Yeah, you also tune it during the break. I saw you last week doing that. I've invested in my own tuning kit, just to make it. But, yeah, I feel your pain, Dan, as far as like a dying piano. But now imagine that you had to play your dying piano in front of an audience. Yeah, and I think, you know, for pianos, you know, it's, it's a dying piano.

it's a little different than violins and cellos and string instruments where there's an improvement over time as long as they're maintained, but they're also a little bit simpler to maintain than a piano. Piano just has so many moving parts, so many potentials for failure. So when an instrument gets to that age, if it's being played regularly, and if you had it for 45 years and we're enjoying it, whatever, you've probably gotten most of the use out of it. Now, that's not saying that you couldn't replace the action, replace the strings, replace the pedals, but basically replace every part that moves, the hammers, you know, everything that's in contact with something else, basically what you would end up doing. And I've kind of, you know, done this over the years

with a couple of different instruments where you're rebuilding and replacing. And you kind of end up, if you wanted to get back to great playing condition, you're replacing everything, everything except for the soundboard. And oftentimes you're replacing that. Yeah, sometimes that's correct. Yeah, but the, what do they call it, the harp, which is the big metal part. That's usually fine. The pin block. The pin block. And the case of the instrument. And so you've got like a brand new piano in there, which if you've got a beautiful case and you love that, you can do that. But you're going to probably spend more money doing that well than it would cost you to buy a really good quality used piano and maybe even a new piano. That's right.

You know, one of the things about pianos is not too long ago, everybody had one in their house. And now almost nobody does. So you can actually get really good deals on used pianos. And pretty much anywhere in the world right now. There's lots of old pianos. old uprights, especially needing some love and someone to play them. Right. And I mean, just a little bit of legwork, you could be rewarded with a really good quality instrument that may not be brand new, but is not going to be to the point of

your instruments, Dan, where you don't feel like you really can, you know, play it without a bunch of work. So I know you ask about keyboards, too, and there's certainly some great keyboards out there. You're going to end up spending more, in our opinion, to get a really good quality keyboard than you could find a quality acoustic piano depending on your budget and probably get a lot more enjoyment especially just for like

jazz playing solo piano playing dynamic range unless you just want to get a keyboard for all the different sounds and stuff that can be fun too but in terms of piano playing a lot of the stuff we talk here you're really going to want to have an acoustic yeah there's I mean it's never been a better time to have an electric keyboard they're better than

of course as technology is it's better than it's ever been but it's still not quite there for piano sounds and for the feel of an actual hammer hitting a string. There's yeah it's hard to get that I mean we're old school here though we're a little biased we're old school I mean you know Roland makes some great stuff Nord I play a Nord when I have when I have to have a keyboard but I know you feel the same way which is then in your home it's best to have hammer hitting a string it's best to have a real piano if you can right right and so I would say you know

if you look, if you go to community music schools, conservatories in your area, just university music departments, and look, if they still do this, had little bulletin boards, and I think they do, I've seen these recently, where people will advertise, you know, a piano, because generally people are trying to get rid of pianos at a certain point, and you can even sometimes find an instrument, someone might advertise it for $500, or $1,000, but they don't really realize what the market actually is. and it might be an okay piano, but they're going to quickly find out if they need to get rid of that piano, they're pretty much going to have to pay someone $500 just to move it out.

So sometimes if you catch someone desperate enough, not that I'm recommending doing this, but if you do, you can say, look, I'll give you $100 or I'll just give it to me for free, but I'll take it out today. And then you can have to pay a little bit of money to get it moved. But you'd be surprised what you can find, because sometimes people will have a piano. They might have bought it 25 years ago for their kid to learn how to play, and the kid didn't really play or maybe played a little, and it's just been sitting there,

and it's in pretty good shape, you know. Yeah, no, you can actually get a really good deal this way. I would talk to the piano tuner who told you that yours was dead. Right. Because actually nobody sees more pianos than piano tuners, especially dying pianos. Or if you have a local piano shop, you know, we have here in St. Louis Jackson Pianos, which does this very same thing.

You take these old pianos and they restore them, and then you can buy them. There's a lot of places like that around the country and around the world. So get to know your piano tuner, your local piano shop or dealer, and just ask them, you know, make friends with them and ask them, hey, do you have anything that can be restored? Right. And you can actually get a really good deal on a good piano that way.

Yeah, and then check out, you know, local churches, synagogues, mosques, schools in the area. A lot of times they have instruments they're trying to get rid of. We get calls here all the time because people know we're into pianos, you know, about, oh, I've got this piano, I want to get into a good home or something. And that usually a good home means where it's going to be. played and enjoyed instead of just sitting there taking up space somewhere. And I think generally you're going to spend, I mean to get like say that, you know, a good Nord, electro or some of the really good keyboards, I mean, those are like what, three, four thousand, maybe even $5,000.

Yeah, so if you want the 88 key weighted key Nord, I think 26 is what they start at. Right. But they go up to five. Yeah. And I mean, if you look around, I would say for $5,000 or even $4,000 in most, you know, mid-sized to large cities in the U.S., and I would think a lot of parts of the rest of the world are like this as well. You can find even a grand sometimes in pretty good shape. Now, for $4,000, you might find a grand that needs a little bit of work, say $1,000 worth of work, but now you've got a little baby grand for five Gs that can really, you know, do something nice for you.

But, I mean, for $4,000, you could actually buy a pretty decent used Yamaha or Steinway upright. I would think a really good one. And then look at Craigslist, you know, based upon the city, but also look at other cities, you know, within driving distance to you. So if you live in, you know, like pretty much anywhere in Texas and the eastern part, look at like Houston, Dallas. I mean, you will be amazed how many instruments are on there. You have to learn a little bit to kind of call and vet them out before you drive, you know, far to really find out what the condition is. But you can find some good instruments that way as well. Totally.

Well, Dan, we hope this helps. Thank you for submitting our very first voice question. For anybody listening to this, if you want to submit a voice question, go to you'll hearit.com. There is a little button at the bottom of the page where you can just record it right there on your computer or your phone. And it sends... It comes right to our answering machine. At the You'll Hear It podcast headquarters. It's recorded to tape and Peter has to erase the tape every week.

That's right. So get them in. I'm willing to do it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear at Podcast. You can go to you'll hear it.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello. Wait, you can do that. Absolutely.

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