A Common Mistake When Buying a Used Piano

Recently I was called to a home to evaluate a grand piano a couple was thinking about purchasing.  The grand piano appeared to be in excellent condition.  One could not help noticing the quality of wood.  It was a beautiful piano.  The owner had even had it delivered so they could see and hear it in their very own home.

The piano looked to be about 50 years old and was manufactured by a well-known and well-respected company that has been in business for over a hundred years. On that information alone some would have snapped it up, sight unseen.  However, these people didn't want to make just an emotional purchase, but an informed one as well.

They were ready to buy what looked like a superb piano at an excellent price.  And the idea of calling someone in to look at the piano was basically just an after thought.  They even had their cell phones in hand ready to make that "we'll buy it" call.

Without striking a note, I told them it was a gem.  But just to be on the safe side, I said I wanted to make one test - a test to determine the holding strength of the key pins that hold the piano strings in place. 

This test is done with a torque wrench, which is an industry tool made specifically for determining the torque or holding strength of the pins. In the piano industry, the torque wrench measures tension in inch-pounds (not foot-pounds as used in the automobile industry).

The key pins are screwed in a large piece of laminated hardwood appropriately named a pin block. Over the years the pin block may lose its ability to hold the string pins in place due to constantly changing temperatures, humidity, quality of the wood itself, greatly affecting the quality of the piano's performance.

Generally, pianos coming from the manufacturer will have a string-pin "torque reading" of well over 100, and sometimes exceeding 200.  A good string-pin torque reading for a used piano could be somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 90.  Even a pin reading between 60-70 is acceptable.

The average torque reading on this piano was 20.  I could just about turn the string pins with my fingers!

When torque falls below 60, the piano is simply not going to hold a tune as long as a piano with pin readings in the 90's or low 100's.

Weak pins also greatly affect the string unisons.  What I'm saying here is that most keys on a piano have three strings to strike.  When you strike a key, all three strings sound together.  These strings must sound in unison - clean, crisp, and straight.  With weak string pins this task is harder, if not impossible.  As soon as the piano tuner has the key strings sounding as one, one or more of the strings is already starting to drift.  I've had to tell piano owners with weak key pins that I'm not going to make it out their front door before some of the strings start to drift out of unison.

Does this mean this piano is not worth buying?   Not necessarily.  But the buyer and the seller need to understand how this condition affects the selling price of the piano

For example, let us say we're looking at a very nice 60 year old 6 foot 8 inch, Mason & Hamblin grand piano with weak pins.  And say the people who own the piano are asking $12,000 for it. The owners need to know that you know the pin block in their piano is very weak, and would have to be replaced, along with new string-pins, in order to bring the piano up to its proper performance level.  And that this repair is going to cost some money -- a couple of thousand dollars for sure -- which the asking price should reflect.  (My guess is they already know about the piano's problem and that could be the main reason they want to sell it). 

So, before you buy that knock-out looking piano, make a call to a good piano technician.  Ask if they have a string-pin, or key pin torque wrench.  If they do, fine.  If they don't, keep calling.  You may wind up calling a piano dealer and hiring their services.  In any event, it's money well spent.  So there is no misunderstanding, it is not mandatory for a good piano technician to have, or use a key pin torque wrench.  They can usually give you a very good idea by just using their tuning wrench.  However, a torque wrench will provide precise measurements. 

To close my story, the prospective buyers were most grateful and later that afternoon they called the owner and asked him to come and pick up his piano since they had decided not to buy it.  In this case they didn’t want to have to put the additional money into it. 

When you’re about to make an investment of this size, it's a good idea to know as much as possible about your purchase.