

For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump - dangoldin
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html?_r=2&ref=arts

======
cfinke
A piano that has not been regularly tuned will lose its ability to stay tuned,
turning it into a very large and heavy place to display sheet music, just like
a car that never gets an oil change will eventually become an immobile scrap
metal sculpture.

Shortly after we got married, my wife and I took possession of a 1918 upright
piano that had not been tuned in a long time. We didn't know enough about
pianos to know better, so we spent considerable time and effort to transport
it 40 miles and up a short flight of stairs into our new home... only to
dismantle it by hand less than a year later and slowly throw it away. It
couldn't be tuned, and it took up too much room to keep if it wasn't going to
be played. I think we sold the cast iron soundboard as scrap for a few
dollars, and I did save some of the larger pieces of wood, which I used to
build a bed for my two-year old son a few years later.

As a side note, if you've never taken apart a piano, I highly recommend it.
You get a specific understanding of its inner workings, even if you think you
already know how it functions.

Pictures of the piano disassembly:

With the keyboard removed:
[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2193/2299985304_d0b38313f6_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2193/2299985304_d0b38313f6_b.jpg)

The keys that I saved for a long time but never found a use for:
[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2299984652_a024f4a05e_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2299984652_a024f4a05e_b.jpg)
(They're like teeth that have been knocked out: much much longer than you'd
expect.)

The soundboard exposed, and the huge screwdriver I had to buy (see the top of
the photo) to remove the screws attaching it to the wooden back:
[http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/2300002756_92e8503676_b.j...](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/2300002756_92e8503676_b.jpg)

The soundboard removed:
[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2217/2300002188_68c614d900_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2217/2300002188_68c614d900_b.jpg)

Just a portion of the screws and other hardware holding it together:
[http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2095/2299206761_ae640697d9_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2095/2299206761_ae640697d9_b.jpg)

~~~
mikeash
Can you explain what causes a piano that hasn't been tuned to lose the ability
to stay tuned? It sounds interesting, and I can't quite figure out how that
would work.

~~~
UrLicht
The tuning pegs might become stuck to the side of the pegboard holes they are
in. Also, if the strings are not kept at the correct tension, there is a real
possibility of the iron frame becoming warped or even breaking.

~~~
udp
Same thing happens with a guitar if you leave it without strings or heavily
detuned. The neck can begin to warp and become very easy to break.

~~~
soperj
That's also why you have a truss rod, to prevent/correct neck warping. I've
never seen a neck that was easy to break though...

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mechanical_fish
Larry Fine's _Piano Book_ is an interesting read. The take-home lesson is that
pianos are far more fragile than they look. They are continuously falling
apart. Poor humidity and temperature control takes its toll on them, the
soundboard wears out, the tuning pegs wear out, all of that felt most
definitely ages and wears out and stiffens, they're full of moving parts, and
even letting them get too far out of tune will damage them long-term.

Most of those eighty-year-old instruments really _aren't_ worth keeping, and
if you want your instrument to live to be eighty in good condition you need to
budget for ongoing maintenance, and then eventually get the thing torn down
and rebuilt. It's like owning a car.

It's hard, though, because I remember playing with my late grandmother's piano
when I was around five years old, and now it's probably in a landfill
somewhere. On the other hand, I still have my grandfather's slide rule, which
he took to meteorology school at MIT during World War II. The secret is to
choose _highly portable_ mementoes of a bygone technological era. ;)

~~~
fredley
This is very true. Honestly, even the best-kept instrument degrades
significantly over time. When's the last time you saw anything but a brand new
instrument in a big concert? There's a reason you never see pros playing
treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would.

Aside from their historical or ornamental value as furniture, old pianos are
pretty useless.

~~~
StavrosK
> There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments
> the way a violinist would.

I don't understand. Violins are instruments too. Did you just mean pianos, or
others too?

~~~
pnathan
Pianos don't improve with age.

A decently constructed instrument in the violin family will, as will (to a
lesser extent) brass instruments.

I don't have a particular set of citations, it's just musician lore.

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digitalsushi
I am not a piano player, or even an official player of any musical instrument.
I don't know how to read music.

A year ago, we were offered an upright Kimball built in 1970 by my newly
acquired in-laws. My father in law is a portly fellow and insisted we move it
ourselves, but I instead paid exactly 300 dollars to have it moved the 14
miles from Exeter to Lee.

We let it adjust to the humidity in our house for a half a year, and then we
paid exactly 175 dollars to have it tuned. As subjective as this is, the man
who tuned it said "it was a D and now it is a B". He said that the Kimballs
are a very cheap piano with a cheap sound, and tried to sell me a grand piano
for 5000 dollars used. It would have required I vacate my home office to the
basement.

He had other pianos for sale, and some were as affordable (but as cheap) as
the 300 dollars I paid for a free piano.

It's immensely pleasurable having a piano next to where I program. I don't
know what I am doing, but I suspect this is a lot of the allure - I sit there
and poke, and figure out my programming challenge of the day while my fingers
are occupied. We all know full well how the frontal lobe needs to be engaged
for the "coprocessor" to have a chance at resolving our issues for us.

The piano is about 4 feet wide and barely 2 feet from the wall. Since the
bench sits underneath, this is frankly not a huge investment in space. I
recommend a piano highly to the non-player due to its affordability and its
distraction properties, my own version of prayer beads I use while debugging
in my head.

~~~
BobPalmer
> It's immensely pleasurable having a piano next to where I program. I don't
> know what I am doing, but I suspect this is a lot of the allure - I sit
> there and poke, and figure out my programming challenge of the day while my
> fingers are occupied. We all know full well how the frontal lobe needs to be
> engaged for the "coprocessor" to have a chance at resolving our issues for
> us.

While not directly related, this is exactly the same reason I have a beater
guitar hanging directly next to my workstation - if I get into a bit of tough
code, I just take a break, strum a few chords, and then get back down to
business.

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zefhous
The better pianos (Steinway, Mason & Hamlin) from the 1920s are actually still
very valuable and in demand. A well kept or restored grand piano from that era
costs > $20,000 and can be one of the best deals out there for a good
instrument. But any low end piano — even one that's only 15-20 years old — is
destined for the dumpster before long.

There are two problems that cause this:

1\. Lack of craftsmanship in the original instrument.

2\. The expense and lack of skilled labor to restore and regulate pianos.

It's just too expensive and time consuming to have a skilled technician work
on a low-quality piano, and because they are not made well in the first place,
they just won't stay well-regulated for long.

Because of this, even a relatively new and good looking piano doesn't make a
great instrument once it gets past a certain point.

This is a common problem in music schools. Most of the pianos are in poor
condition and the technicians can't keep up with keeping them in good shape,
and the good pianos are generally locked up and only the piano majors have
access to them.

Only high end pianos are worth putting any time and money into, and because of
that they actually make a good investment, while the value of low end pianos
just drops off a cliff and they end up in a dumpster because they aren't even
worth moving and repairing.

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EzGraphs
Very sad to me. Digital pianos are a great innovation in many respects but are
sort of analogous to microwave ovens in cooking. Work well enough to be widely
adopted, but are unlikely ever to be the means of producing a masterpiece.

The relative lack of (touch) sensitivity and the more limited variation in
timbre are immediately noticeable. One of the other qualities of a traditional
piano that I instantly miss in even the best digital simulations is
sympathetic vibration. Holding the sustain pedal down will not simply allow
the notes to play longer. Other strings that freed up begin to vibrate as
well. It produces an effect that - the last I checked - is not well emulated
in a digital environment.

Reflective of the values of our age I guess. Small, relatively portable, low
maintenance wins out in many other arenas. Why not music...

~~~
crazygringo
You're talking about keyboards, not digital pianos.

I currently use a Yamaha P155. The keys are weighted and touch-sensitive just
like a real piano. Each key has its own recording, with its own timbre, at
different volume levels. I can even use a damper pedal which responds to have
far down I've pushed it.

It's not _exactly_ the same as a real piano, but as someone who played a real
piano for 10 years, it's damned close. It's not like moving from a gas stove
to a microwave, it's like moving from a gas stove to an electric stove. Not
quite the same, but for nearly all practical purposes, it's good enough -- and
wearing headphones in your apartment so your neighbors don't hate you, it just
wins.

~~~
Dove
I have something similar, and I agree -- a quality digital piano is almost as
good as the real thing. In some ways better: it never needs tuned, and the
gentler touch is easy on the fingers.

I will admit, though, when I want thunder, there's no substitute for real
strings.

------
UrLicht
I once bought a beater piano for $200 so I could practice tuning it. We didn't
have room in our apartment, so a friend let us set it up in his and I'd come
over once in a while and bang on it (thanks, Eric!).

Most of the weight of a piano comes from the cast iron frame inside that holds
the >20 tons of tension from the strings. And this piano was no exception - it
was an "upright grand" meaning it was as tall as a baby grand is long. It took
six of us to cajole it up my friend's stairs.

So when moving time came for him and his wife we had to decide what to do with
the piano. None of us wanted to move the damn thing again, and since I really
didn't have an emotional attachment to it whatsoever, we came up with the next
best idea - cut it to pieces with a sawzall. And like another commenter said,
if you ever have the opportunity to do this, do it. It was pretty fun. There's
nothing quite like the sound of taking wire cutters to a fully tense piano
string.

~~~
cperciva
_There's nothing quite like the sound of taking wire cutters to a fully tense
piano string._

... as long as you're careful about it. I know musicians who have been injured
by being in the wrong place when a string snapped.

------
dugmartin
From the classifieds and Craigslist listings around here I'd say the value of
upright pianos is actually negative. They are offered as free as long as you
agree to move them.

We bought our kids an old used full-sized keyboard (Technics P-30). It is an
older model but it sounds nice and most importantly, the kids can practice
with headphones on, saving the sanity of others in the house.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"I'd say the value of upright pianos is actually negative."_

We just got rid of my parents' old upright piano, which had been abused by all
of us kids for decades, but was still almost perfectly in tune.

It was definitely negative value. It was heavy and taking up valuable space.
It cost almost $200 to get piano movers to take it to salvage / the dump. So
if someone had taken it for free, we would have been ecstatic.

(Also, our Technics SX-PX552 does the job just fine.)

------
DannoHung
Something about throwing out musical instruments bothers me... the same way as
it does with books.

~~~
bgutierrez
I know exactly what you mean. Then I worked at Barnes and Noble where we tore
the covers off of mass markets that couldn't sell to send back to the
publisher and discarded the rest of the book. Every now and then a decent book
would go into this pile (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, once) but
the vast majority of time it was harlequins and similar stuff that was churned
out for indiscriminate tastes. Imagine whole garbage cans of this stuff. Stuff
that would be replaced the following day and then thrown out the following
month.

Sometimes books simply aren't worth the shelf space.

I eventually felt the same about a $50 guitar that I bought out of
musiciansfriend catalogue when I was 16. Tuning pegs that wouldn't sit still,
poorly aligned frets… the rosette was printed onto a piece of paper. It's hard
to believe that something as beautiful as a musical instrument could be built
so poorly.

------
fredley
I expect this is largely due to the prevalence of decent-enough quality
digital pianos. A school or church no longer needs to deal with a second-hand
honky-tonk that needs maintenance and tuning (not to mention several people to
move) - they can get a passable digital for a few hundred bucks.

The only market for real pianos these days is with serious professionals,
concert venues, and people who use them as furniture.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
The problem with digital pianos is that they can't fill a room with sound like
a physical piano unless you have excellent quality speakers. Most of the
digital pianos with built in speakers are pretty weak and it while they are
excellent for practice with headphones they won't replace the real thing if
you're playing for others to listen.

~~~
UrLicht
Also, if you're at least semi-serious about becoming good at piano, you'll
want a real one because of the action (and if you're really serious about it,
you'll want a grand). Digital pianos, while having improved over previous
models, are still not close enough to the feel of a real piano to give you
good tactile feedback and therefore good technique.

~~~
marquis
I'll be building a special room for a grand in my new house, and I'm terrified
of the things. I grew up playing upright and when concerts came around that
involved a hall and a grand I simply didn't know how to manage the sheer force
of sound that comes out. Quite majestic but I agree, if you want to be an
accomplished pianist of any level it's the investment you need to make.

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stcredzero
_> Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can
buy a new one made in China that’s just as good_

Has happened to a number of instruments. <http://amzn.com/B003UHLH0C>

There should be an opportunity here for leasing non-digital pianos, given some
technical solution that solves the transportation problem. (Perhaps something
like a PODS transporter? Composite frame?) The size of the disposal problem is
a big pain point.

Carbon fiber composite pianos might represent a significant advance. Such
composites are stiff enough to avoid much of the "settling" of a metal and
wood structure under such immense compression and cantilever loads. (Carbon
fiber composites are so stiff, they caused Boeing some problems with their
newest plane. Instead of tolerances resulting in the gradual bending and
settling of metal parts into place, the slightly mismatched carbon fiber parts
maintained their stresses.) This property would significantly reduce the labor
costs of tuning.

~~~
klodolph
There exist pianos with carbon fiber sound boards. They advertise increased
tuning stability and reduced sensitivity to environmental conditions. I don't
know how they sound. The advertisements say that they have "increased
sustain", "a brighter harmonic spectrum", and a "much wider dynamic range",
but to me, all of these sound like downsides.

The dynamic range of some pianos is already too large, increased sustain
beyond current levels makes everything sound muddy, and "brighter" could mean
"harsher". For the same reasons, people are reluctant to replace wooden parts
of other instruments with newer materials. I'd be willing to buy one, but I'd
definitely have to play it first.

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aidenn0
Having moved several pianos, I definitely get the enjoyment of being able to
destroy one. Ususally about 80% of the way through the move "accidentally"
dropping it seems like a good idea...

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gary2012
I guess the golden lining of the story is that it’s not that people have
stopped playing, they just switched to electronic keyboards for ease and
expense reduction.

Always sad to see old technology go away. (ie anyone read a hard copy of a
book lately?)

------
sspencer
Looks like plenty of opportunities for more installation pieces like this:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/us/28piano.html>

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cygwin98
Acoustic pianos are dying and losing to digital pianos. It's a trend just like
film camera lost to digital camera. No tuning required.

~~~
ivancdg
Nothing could be further from the truth. Your metaphor is specious.

(Sorry if that sounds harsh, it is intended more to be just a firm statement).

The complexity of the piano sound is very, very difficult to duplicate,
although we've been trying for decades.

There is no question that electric pianos are more practical for certain
situations (country houses in climates with high humidity, for example).

But those are exceptions where practical concerns outweigh aesthetics (like
watching a DVD on your laptop on the train).

A fine, hand-made acoustic piano has no serious contenders at the moment, from
the viewpoint of both the musician, and the sophisticated listener.

One could argue that fine, hand-made instruments are becoming more rare
because they are more expensive to produce and the market has shrunk, but that
is a different argument.

~~~
cygwin98
That's OK. You can have your opinion.

 _A fine film camera has no serious contenders at the moment, from the
viewpoint of both the photographers, and the sophisticated viewer_

Some professional photographers said basically the same thing on film vs
digital cameras a decade ago. See what do we have now. I can even predict that
in ten years Steinway will bankrupt like what Kodak did.

 _The complexity of the piano sound is very, very difficult to duplicate,
although we've been trying for decades._

As a programmer, I especially disagree with this point. The challenges digital
pianos face right now is the key-touching not the sound itself.

~~~
fr0sty
> I can even predict that in ten years Steinway will bankrupt like what Kodak
> did.

I'll take the other side of that bet.

------
lgleason
At least Top Gear will have a ample supply of pianos to drop on cars :).

