A piano to last

[PianoGuy]

A Yamaha C110A made by Pearl River or one of the Gehr.Steinberg, Carl Ebel, Eavestaff, or Sangler sisters from the Perzina factory. All are made in China and are none the worse for it. Better value than second hand IMO. C110As are currently available for suicidal prices, so make sure your chosen dealer will still be in business in 5 years time in case you need to make a waranty claim.

If you can get your dealer to sell you a Kawai KX10 for under 2K, then that's a good buy too, but the build quality isn't quite up to Yam standards on these baby Kawais.

PG

[Barrie Heaton]

I want to buy something that in 50-100 years time will still be a quality piano that people will still want to play and won't just be left in a garage to rot.

The pianos that PianoGuy has pointed you to are probably the best buy in that price range for quality as an entry level piano. However, history tell us that small pianos just don�t have the staying power that larger pianos have - take look at the 110 range of the 60 -70's the tone is now very poor in a lot of these pianos, this is all due to the face of soundboard size, a small piano has the same force on the sound board as a large one but spread over a smaller area about 1.5 tons. Therefore the wood fibbers tend to get tired quicker a larger quality piano is more likely to be just as nice in 50 - 100 years than an small one depending on the environment and how it is looked after. So I would say you need to up your budget.

Having said that you could spend ÂŁ20,000 on an upright and still find it is placed in the garage as it all depend on who lives in the house in 50 - 100 years time and how much they appreciate a piano

Barrie,

[PianoGuy]

I want to buy something that in 50-100 years time will still be a quality piano that people will still want to play and won't just be left in a garage to rot.

The pianos that PianoGuy has pointed you to are probably the best buy in that price range for quality as an entry level piano. However, history tell us that small pianos just don�t have the staying power that larger pianos have -

Good points well made.
120 cm or above is always desirable, but if you check out a Yamaha M108 from the '70s, (very similar to a new C110A) they don't appear to have deteriorated much at all, which bodes well for new instruments of similar design.

Push your budget to 3K and you could have a Pearl River Mi124, built with Yamaha design input, (look for the 'Made by Yamaha Pearl River' sticker) or a good second hand Yamaha U1. You could also find something like a bigger Danemann or Welmar from their best period of production (60s-70s) for GBP 1,800 to GBP 2,500 if you don't mind dated cabinet design.

[Bill Kibby]

In order to judge lifespan, you need to ask yourself what is most likely to cause an old piano to be written off, and that is the point where it needs repinning, and therefore restringing). (I use the term "repinning" in the english sense of wrestpin replacement.) In the seventies, some brand new british and chinese pianos were being sent out of the factories with very loose wrestpins (tuning pins) - resistance to unwinding in the region of 20 inchpounds or less. By contrast, Yamaha and Kemble's loosest pins were in the region of 90 inchpounds, so they are still around!