Untitled Document

Frequently Asked Questions

Sponsored by Piano Warehouse - the UK's leading piano specialists

Serial Numbers

‘How old is it?’ is the first question. Make sure it still has at least thirty years left in it. The manufacturer of the piano and when it was made would give indications as to how much longer you can expect it to last.

On an Upright you would find it inside the lid, usually on the right hand side, or possibly on the bottom in the middle (see below), and it will be a 7 or 8 digit number unless it is a old piano which may have less digits. On a grand piano, you will usually find the serial number at the front underneath the desk, on the frame.

There are a number of websites and resources you can use to find out the ages. An easy way would be to call a specialist who can look within a book called the Pierce Piano Atlas. This is a ‘piano bible’ which lists piano manufacturers and serial numbers by year and alphabetically. However, there were a vast number of piano makers that did not keep any records of the pianos made, so if the manufacturer is not very well known it may be extremely difficult to find anything out about the piano.

This information is available in the Public Domain, however it is relatively hard to come by and therefore not obvious to find. Most piano shops, however, will have a copy of the Piano Atlas for reference. The sponsor of this site can provide a serial number location service, and even offers an automated serial number search for the more common makes of piano. You can find this here.

I’m looking at a piano that I’m thinking of buying, I look up the serial number and find that it was made in 1932. Where do I go from there?

If it is that sort of age you need to find what work has been done on it, if any.

I don't know anything about pianos. If it's an older instrument, what sort of work might have been done?

Usually restoration work on a piano from this period would include restringing, refacing of the hammers, regulation, voicing or casework. In more extreme cases there may have been some work carried out on the soundboard.

Restringing involves replacing all the strings and pins on the piano, and is definitely a job for a qualified technician. There are on average between 210-220 strings on the piano (depending on the model), all of which are held on to the frame under enormous tension. A piano will require several tunings once the strings have been fitted, and if it is an older model it may need further tunings. Restringing is not cheap, but on the plus side it should last a good long while!

The soundboard is the heart of a piano's tone and timbre generation, so this is a very important area to look at. The most serious problems arise when cracks appear in the soundboard. This can be due to age, but is very often a result of modern central heating, so it is wise to go over the surface with a fine toothcomb and look for any splits in the wood. Even if they are "hairline" fissures they are likely (unless you are very lucky) to degrade the tone of the piano and in the worst cases may even make an unpleasant buzzing noise as you play.

Presumably, pianos made by some manufacturers of a certain age are more viable than others. What are the best makes of older pianos to go for?

One of the big groups of second hand pianos that do very well are the pre-war German pianos. Berlin and Leipzig were producing extremely high quality pianos in the twenty or thirty years before WWII. Steinway, Bluthner, Bechstein, Feurich and Ibach were among the key players to come out of Germany at this time.

The East German manufacturing centres were at the 'top of their game until WWII. However, a lot of the companies based there were basically decimated in WWII, along with most other industrial areas in the East of the country. Some piano makers were able to move to West Germany after the war, where the "economic miracle" allowed them to obtain the high-grade materials they required to produce at the level that they produced before. The companies that remained in the East carried on producing pianos and trading off the name, but their quality deteriorated rapidly. So pre-war German pianos are generally seen as being better than post-war, apart from those coming out of West Germany.

This question can only be answered in relative terms. Of course, In the early days of the great pianomakers, a great deal of care and attention to detail was accorded to the instruments at the production stage, so older versions of the big names last a very long time and are worth renovating. However it is also true to say that the vast majority of pianos made even in this era were of the cheap and cheerful variety! The more modern manufactured pianos, for example from China, Indonesia and South Korea, are generally produced with a lot less human labour thanks to modern technology, so it could be argued that the level of craftsmanship that goes into making the instrument has declined. Indeed, On the other hand, the precision assembly line processes and advancements such as kiln-drying have meant that modern pianos are relatively more robust and durable.

So, focusing on the more recent 1950’s to 1970’s manufactured pianos from Asia, do you have any general observations about the major players from this era?

The 1960 and 70’s was when the East Asian piano manufacturers really started to take off, and the European manufacturers hastened their decline. There was a lot of very intense competition in the Far East, with names like ‘Yamaha’, ‘Kawai’, ‘Atlas’, ‘Eral’ appearing in the Far East during the shift within this period. There was still a lot of British and European manufacturers producing in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but they tended to be more expensive, due to higher overheads, and were unable to produce similar volumes. This led to many of them being forced to close, as they were not able to keep up with the cheaper products coming from overseas.

So, suppose I have identified the piano, when it was made and the manufacturer's details - is there an easy way that I can cross-reference those bits of information, find out where in the spectrum it lies, and determine what sort of use I can expect to get out of it today?

I would refer you to some of the "portal" websites, which look into the history of pianos. Two very good examples are the website of the Blind Piano Tuners' association, who can be found at www.uk-piano.org, and also www.pianos.co.uk which is a general resource for piano information. These sites both have rankings and valuation guidance for many sorts of pianos. They are by no means the only sites out there, but they are very comprehensive.

Say I am interested in a piano with a fair few ‘miles on the clock’. How can I find out about the ‘service history’?

For a long time it was common practice for tuners to actually post a label inside the piano, and update this when it was tuned, In this way one could tell the tuning history. Sometimes there is also documentary information accompanying piano, but this is normally associated with the top of the range pianos.

The first thing to do is talk to a qualified piano technician for guidance, as there are many complex factors to consider. However, there are a few things you can look for yourself if you want an "at-a-glance" idea of a piano's condition. If you look inside the piano, you can tell how much wear there is on the hammers. For example if you can see very deep indentations where the hammers been hitting the strings, they have been played a lot. Replacement of these hammers can be costly, so it is a case of weighing up what other work might also need to be done as well. Another thing to check for is oxidisation, or rusting, of the strings’, which occurs over time, particularly within the bass. This causes the sound to ‘deaden’ and become unresponsive.

You may also want to have a look at what condition the ‘wrest pins’ are in, (these are the tuning pins at the top of the strings) and the condition of the wood around these pins. This is vital to tuning. Also observe whether it is an iron or 3/4 framed piano. The 3/4 frame pianos are fairly rare now (certainly no longer in production), and they are usually in very bad shape. They are far less sturdy than full iron-framed pianos, they tend to warp with heat and climate conditions and do not hold their tuning. As with all old pianos, the 3/4 frame versions can be severely affected by modern central heating.

It is also important to determine whether the piano is ‘over-strung’ or ‘straight-strung’. The straight-strung pianos were very complicated in design, and therefore difficult for technicians to deal with. This meant they often fell into disrepair. The condition of the case of the piano is not critical to the sound, and is a personal choice. The older pianos tend to be wooden cased, and the modern ones MDF. However, both old and new pianos are finished with a veneer.

Are there any cheap ways to improve the quality or lifespan of a secondhand piano?

Talking to your piano technician is always the first step - (s)he will be able to tell you if a piano is nearing the end of its useful life. It is important to bear in mind that piano restoration can be a very expensive process, however if you are simply looking to get a few more years out of a piano without spending a fortune, here are a few simple "tweaks" that you can ask your technician to carry out:

- A common problem with older pianos is a lack of response in the bass. This can sometimes be addressed by "twisting" the bass strings in order to get more resonance by increasing the tension of the copper windings.

- Often the felt on the hammers will have been hardened through many years of striking the strings, and this can render the tone flat and brittle. A way around this can be to reshape and tone the hammers, which improves the pianos' tonal quality.