No Such Thing as a Free Piano

If you are in the market for a piano and you look on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, you may be inundated with ads for “FREE” Pianos. Make no mistake, their is no such thing as a free piano. Between moving costs, tuning and repairs a “free” piano can quickly become a piano that you have at least paid a few hundred dollars for to make it playable and get it into your house. Most of the time Pianos are free for a reason, sometimes it’s benign, the owner is moving and just wants the piano out of the house and doesn’t care to get its value, or perhaps the value is so low that the only way to get rid of it is to offer it for free. Sometimes the reasons can be a bit more nefarious, such as the piano has been compromised in a way that makes it untuneable. This can mean many things; that the pin block is cracked and the tuning pins no longer hold the tension of the strings, the sound is cracked and the ribs are coming loose creating a bad buzzing sound while the notes are being played, or a rodent or insect has gotten into the action and eaten away the hammer and key felts, leaving it unplayable. Their are many things that can make a piano a piece of junk, that is why we always recommend having a trained piano technician look at any piano you want to to get before you move it into your house. To many times I’ve had customers call me and say “Well we had our child’s piano teacher look at it and they thought it was ok so we paid to have it moved”. While the teacher is probably familiar with how a piano is supposed to sound and play like, they probably have no idea what goes into making that happen, nor all of the problems that could cause the piano to not even be able to achieve those goals. Only a professional can really assess the condition of the instrument and give you an idea of how much it will take to bring it back to playing shape.

This Howard Spinet (pictured below) was acquired at a Yard Sale, and was almost a whole step flat and had multiple sticking keys. We were able to work within the customers budget to get the piano in tune, on pitch and with every key working.

This piano turned out to be a good acquisition for the customer. Not all “free” pianos are, so make sure that you always contact a professional technician before committing to having something moved into your home. Or else you could end up having a large piece of a furniture and not a playable instrument.