My god-daughters mother has decided that she wants to have a piano in the house to encourage her 2 young children to enjoy music (and I think she's hoping for free lessons from me!). She doesn't have much of a budget and has asked me to help her purchase an upright.

I have absolutely no idea where to start - I'm assuming she wants to spend about £500. Can anyone give me some pointers on where to begin the search?

Many thanks!

Hi Bing,

Well, without getting off your seat you could start your search here

http://www.uk-piano.org/


Then, if South London is still your haunt you could try Morleys pianos.

http://www.morleypianos.com/pianos-london.htm


And it's also worth noting that Bonhams run piano auctions several times a year. It might be worth it (and fun!) to go along.


There's always the local paper too of course.

Iona

I would look for a digital with that sort of budget. I have just bought a six month old Roland top of the range digital for just over half that. You can actually get fairly decent new ones for £500 and they come with a guarantee, never need tuning, are easily moved and have some fun features such as the record function that will appeal to a young player. My local music shop has an offer on a Yamaha digital for just below £400 at the moment. There are second hand bargain acoustic models to be found but you would need to take a piano technician with you to view and give a price on any work needed. There are some makes of digital to avoid, (Gem and Chase ones aren't too good imo) but some very good ones too. You can't go far wrong with a Yamaha , a Korg or a Roland if it is not more than two or three years old. Repairs are reasonable too and usually around the same price as one tuning unless disaster happens and you get flooded or invaded by rodents.

Yes, I think you would be very lucky to find an upright for £500 that does not need any attention.

I too recommend Morley's, by the way, but I doubt (you could ask of course) that they would have anything under about £1000.

My feeling is that a decent digital would be the way to go, as Petrat suggested.

You CAN get a good acoustic for under 500 pounds, but you'd need to look at quite a few basket cases before you find a good one, and you need the skill/knowledge to recognize it when you find it. It would be too expensive to pay a piano technician to look at every instrument you view - you have to spot the likely good one for yourslef, and then get a technician to see if you were right or not.

Oooh, nice icon MT!

Well when I was choosing a piano, I went to a nearby piano showroom. They had all sorts of pianos, from second hand ones at about £200 to brand new top of the range ones costing thousands. The guy that I spoke to was very helpful - he showed me practically every piano they had, and played a lot of them for me so that I could hear the difference in tone etc. He also told me what would be a 'good buy.' So I would suggest going to some piano showrooms and just asking for advice there. (I live in Scotland so I doubt the one I went to will be much use).

Good luck in your search!