second hand piano

[michamij]

Hello pianostreet.

I've never been to a forum before for my questions but I hope you can help me out.

A few months ago i stopped my keyboard lessons (no, no piano lessons for me). However, I started to play classical music and soundtracks and saw i missed a few keys at the bottom and the top of my keyboard. 44 frustrations later I decided to change from keyboard to electric piano. But i want to change my piano if needed, so a stage piano or electric piano, one I can move with 88 keys. but thing is, I don't know wich one is the best for the price i want to pay. I want to pay it secondhand. What are the things I have to take into account or wich one is simply the best?

Thank you,
Micha

[hfmadopter]

Oh, this sort of question has been asked and answered over and over again in the Instruments Forum here at PianoStreet. You can probably find a lot of answers to your questions there and by doing a search. You just need a little re aligning that's all.

I will say this much, you will find the topic of acoustic vs digital pianos for classical music to be highly controversial. Most here at PS would prefer acoustic but many find use in 88 key digital pianos as well..

[ranniks]

Somewhat longer than a year ago (gosh time flies), David and Outin (and some other who I forgot to mention, I beg your pardon), helped me with picking a piano. At first I was adamant at buying a digital, but somehow, with the help of my teacher, I got persuaded into buying an acoustic.

Digital and acoustics are 2 different worlds. Even so, a digital would be nice right now to replace my acoustic. Mainly because my acoustic takes decent room, somehow I'm paranoid that I bother people with my playing, and that I'm afraid it will one day break through the floor and fall downstairs......

My comparison to both of them: when you are writing, you lean your hands on your desk. A acoustic would be a wooden desk and plastic/finish/whatever desk would be the digital. It doesn't mean either one is better, it's just what you prefer. Compare with lifting for muscle training: iron dumbbells or rubber dumbbells?

I would prefer an acoustic with headphones. Touch has to be somewhere between light and heavy (so the keys weight). Definitely not too light, because then I'd lose control, but not too heavy either, because then playing would become sluggish.

Anyways, the digital back then that I chose would have been around 1000 dollars. Thank my Lord above that I bought my acoustic for 400 dollars. Overal with moving and tuning the price was about 700 dollars, but still. .

Anyways, choose what's most convenient for you (price/space/living arrangement/etc).

I've seen a remarkable piano player by the name of Kylelandry (look him up if you can/want to) who uploads his performances on a yamaha digital piano (sometimes also on a grand acoustic piano). Very excellent playing (for the eyes of such as myself).

[hfmadopter]

I would prefer an acoustic with headphones. Touch has to be somewhere between light and heavy (so the keys weight). Definitely not too light, because then I'd lose control, but not too heavy either, because then playing would become sluggish.

There is a matter in this statement that has relevance in this forum and more so the performance forum. Here is why and you don't see this mentioned a lot.

Practice with headphones is fine as a learning tool to get things such as fingering down or initial learning of a piece. Also if you can practice live as well but just want to play in silence at odd hours and not bother anyone but yourself and perhaps the cat or dog.. However, it gets sketchy regarding learning a piece for performance sake ( and I don't mean just high end or professional performance but say for recital or friends even) . With headphones on it's tough to teach yourself playing with projection in mind. The pianos sound great in the headphones, that's not an issue but there is nothing like live sound projected into a room to train yourself in touch, tone of music and projection together. It's just a different thing and really in three ways, if not four. Earphones, live speakers, live acoustic all being different. The fourth being live recording of acoustic.

That said, I limit my playing with earphones and feel music was written to be played and not heard. I do give people a break by using them obviously, like at 3 am when some urge strikes to work out a passage or idea or potential solution to something !

One last thing. Heavy keys are not always sluggish and lighter keys can be. How do I mean that ? I mean it by speed or velocity of the action. Sluggish indicates slow. Heavy indicates weight or pressure required to move the key down. You can have quick action with pretty heavy keys and slow action with light keys. So say you have the light keys you think you admire. Fine but it does no good if the action is slow and won't repeat worth a darn.

[sucom]

Yamaha are my favourite of all digital pianos but this is just my own personal choice.  Others may say differently.

The cheaper end tend to have a lighter touch (not so good) so really I would say go for the best digital you can afford.  I would always recommend trying a piano first before buying as the touch of a piano is a very personal thing.