Story & Clark piano

[buck60]

Hello. The ser.# is 10507. Can anyone tell me if this is a piano worth buying for $100. and what the date of manufacture is. Thank you so much!

[indianajo]

I played on a Story & Clark, once long ago. I believe it was a competent brand of console piano.  
The charity resale shops near me charge $100 for pianos, even if some keys don't work.  So condition is really more important.  Do all the keys work?  Are any strings broken?  Are the hammers and dampers in the middle the same shape as the ends, or are they beat down by use?  How fast is the action? (ability to play one note over and over).  Is the soundboard visibly cracked?  How tall is it?  Spinets 36" and under are slow in speed and the top quality ones are suitable for only the first five years of a student persuing classical training.  There are many church pianists I have known, however, that never played anything faster than a spinet could support in their whole career,  Do the two string notes sound like the three string notes? Is the tone (ignoring the out of tune condition) pleasing?
Last month there was a low end 48" upright at Goodwill, that was once a player (mostly very low end pianos) and had the pneumatics and roll motor removed.  This piano didn't even have dampers on the top octave and a half, whereas most consoles are only missing an octave of dampers.  
So, it is not an purchase you are going to make money on.  If you are studying and  you want a competent 1946-1980 console piano, this could be one of them.  If it is a prewar upright, Story and Clark may be one of the more famous brands, compared to the hundreds of knockoff brands.  Personally, I prefer the 1946-1980 consoles, the upper half of them, to the imports so highly touted by salesmen today.  Most were not used heavily and except for needing tuning, are as good as new.  And prewar uprights have a certain sound which is most appropriate for ragtime and blues music.  After about 1980, most grand old names had been taken over by global corporations to sell their budget junk, so after that date any opinion I have does not apply. 

[buck60]

Thanks Indianajo for your input. It helps me very much! Take care.