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This hurts...

Wow.....that's really sad. But what are the alternatives when they have reached the end of life?

It really hurts... I couldn't even watch the video clip to the end because I was so upset for those poor pianos...

This video makes me happy!

Pianos are manufactured items with a definite life-span, after which they should be thrown out and, hopefully, replaced. Yes we get our emotions all caught up but lets face it, many of the pianos made over the last 100 years were never intended to last more than 30 years. Glue joints break, strings rust, hammer felt comes unglued, the simply fall apart!

People don't throw out pianos enough! They pass them on, Craigs list, donations and this passing on of trash hurts our industry in 2 particular ways:

1. people who play on these expired instruments don't get the full experience and satisfaction of playing the piano...keys don't work, it can't be tuned, the voicing is horrible. Kids get discouraged playing on pieces of junk and never continue, reinforcing the parents defective thought process "we'll get something cheap and if they stick with it, we'll get something better". Well, guess what, Johnny didn't stick with it because he got no satisfaction out of it.

2. the industry manufacturers and dealers suffer because people don't buy new(er)pianos. A healthy piano industry REQUIRES pianos be replaced.

I hate to admit it, but BoseEric is spot on.

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to tune pianos that are way past their prime.
Granted some top end pianos may be worth rebuilding/restoring, but the bulk of old pianos (particularly low end instruments) are well past their prime and should be replaced.

Keep in mind that beginners need all the help they can get from their instrument, and that it is disheartening to attempt to play a sub-par instrument.

By the same token, it's still sad to see an old piano relegated to the trash heap.
You'd like to think there is some way to recycle the parts at least (ivory keys for scrimshaw anyone?).

I agree with you from a business standpoint. There has to be a healthy market for new or used good pianos in order for the industry to survive. However, the supposition about beginners starting out on junk and giving up because of it is I think only half true. If someone loves it they'll do their best with only having air to practice on until they can afford junk, while a disinterested kid who starts on a new Fazioli will still be disinterested no matter the quality or price of the new instrument.

But the cold, hard facts are these: Most people will never ever in a million years be able to buy a "new" piano, so junk is all they'll ever be able to get (if they could even afford that). So better to have something that undoubtedly will never meet the standards of some of the more affluent on this forum (you know who you are) than to have nothing at all, I say. For most of us, it will always be a choice of getting back and forth to work, getting our kids to school, and still being able to afford a crust of stale bread, or getting a piano. Obviously, the former will always win out over the latter. So the parents of a kid who really wants to learn would greatly appreciate the opportunity to acquire one, even if it is "junk". I know that for a fact because it's what happened with me when I was young. My mom couldn't even afford the stale bread but she managed to scrape a few rocks together and get me an old broken down Balwin. I loved that piano and was very sorry to part with it when I grew up and left for college. I never have gotten really good at playing but I still love it none-the-less.

Agreeably, some of these older instruments will never play a note again, but there are some that could be of great use, at least for a while anyway. Why just toss them out indiscriminantly? And there's lots of amatuer techs who could use them as practice. If you mess up something, sand too much through a veneer, or get bubbles or pits in your lacquer, no biggie, it's only practice. Tear them apart to see how the soundboard fits on the rasten, or work on getting a good downbearing or proper plate height, or referbishing a bridge. Try your hand at reguilding a plate, even if it's cracked. It's only practice. They've got to be good for something. If nothing else, you can always get something for the recycle value of the copper and steel wires.

Anyway, this is my humble but most accurate opinion.

I'm not sure who you mean by "most people" but a high quality vertical piano can be bought new for $5000 and a high quality grand new for $15,000 (some will argue less and may on occasion be true). The piano industry is still a consumer business, selling to ordinary working people who value the things a piano represents.

Not in Australia I think. Sheet music is also much more expensive here.

There are exceptions to everything, but speaking as someone who's been there, I can say that, even as a kid, I hated playing on crap.



It's all about priorities. You'd be surprised at the number of parents who won't bat an eye at spending 30-50k on a brand new car, or 3k on a nice flat screen TV, or the thousands it takes to get kids into a sports program, but balk at the mere sight of a 5k price tag on a piano.

That said, there's a world of difference between a used piano and a junk piano. There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with used pianos, and I've never heard of any competent used piano being sent to the dump.

In the late 70s/early 80s, my father bought, restored, sold used uprights. We had a garage filled with them! At peak, there was a rotation of maybe 25 uprights. I used to help him do the heavy work, then he would work on the innards and keys, and turn a meager profit. We lived in the Philly area, and there were always plenty of uprights for sale for the price of taking them away! Others were maybe $25 or $50.

We'd check them out all the time, and you'd have been shocked how many homes used to have a full acoustic lingering in a corner or back room. You'd be amazed how poorly so many were kept. Inside were always dead rodents and a variety of household items. In time, most people would place a useless piano on a porch to rot in the weather.

There were millions on millions of pianos made in the late 1800s and early 1900s and they almost all went somewhere: the dump. So few people play piano these days, compared to 100 years ago. This mover saw 300 or 400 pianos dumped across 25 years or so... I saw over 100 trashed within about 5 years back around 1980. Some statistic wonks try to estimate the amount of piano players in today's world, but I believe the figure is far too high compared to what I see; otherwise these old acoustics would never hit the rubbish pile.

I wonder if they allow scavengers to pick up the broken pieces… one person’s trash is another person’s treasure?

Rick

That was my 2nd reaction (after being somewhat horrified initially)--all that wasted ivory!

all of those grands would make beautiful tables. i would buy one.

The only sad thing is that there aren't enough cabinetmakers and craftsmen left in the United States who can do something with the cabinet parts, if there's enough usable wood in large enough pieces on them.

Pianos wear out and die. They really do. The NY Times didn't devote enough ink to explaining that. So many people have this crazy belief that there's some school, church, or old-age home that should be grateful to take their old piano-shaped garbage. Or that you'd be doing a favor to some kid by introducing him to piano. (Do you know what I tell people who want to start their kid learning music, and they're not willing or able to buy a proper piano? I tell them to consider classical guitar lessons!)

I'm always apprehensive if I'm visiting someone's house and there's a piano in the living room. Invariably they ask if I'd play something, and I hate to say no. Nobody wants to hear that their beloved "baby grand" is unplayably bad.

Read the article in the Times that accompanies the video.

This is horrible, no matter how bad pianos are, I'm sure 60% of these models could have been loved by someone else...I was cringing at every crash..

My first thought was "I'D TAKE THAT FOR FREE!... I need firewood."

The sadness should never come as trash hits the can, rather at the people allowing their magnificent pianos to deteriorate that far. Sure, all pianos degrade in time, but you'd be surprised how easy and "inexpensive" it is to maintain a piano across 100 years... when compared to the money spent to buy a new one.

That probably applies more to grands. The price of a new Kawai upright, for example, is rather inexpensive. The benefit of getting a $6000 Kawai upright outstrips the cost of restoring an old vertical piano with a crud finish.

They seem to have had the harp removed, maybe for recycling of the metal?

Can't we recycle wood into paper, or construction products ( chipboard)? Maybe it's not cost effective.

At least they last longer than PC's and mobile phones.

Greetings,
Some considerations. There is little wood to be had in an older piano. Manufacturers used nothing of a higher grade than necessary, and there is a bunch of little pieces all glued up to make most of these pianos. Square grands make nice tables, if you cut them down, and upright panels can be decorative, but there isn't much else to save. An upright piano takes approx. 22 minutes to burn completely down. There is approx. 1 coffee can full of screws in an old upright. (and they are great quality, use a magnet through the ashes). plates do not explode as the piano burns, strings do not pop. They simply go out with a cloud of pollution and smoke.

The only things sadder than seeing pianos trashed are the faces on the family that has just spent their entire piano budget on a piano that cannot be tuned. It is a sad thing, and I have had to deliver this news. These unusable pianos, and in the hands of a con-artist, are simply a means to steal from the uneducated. Burn them before they burn others!
Regards,

You can easily recycle wood... let it fade into the ground and grow a new tree on top of it.

Death comes to instruments as surely as it does to people, later if not sooner. And who are we to take the bread out of the mouths of the landfill operators? Though it does seem to me that if cans, weighing a fraction of an ounce, are worth recycling, a piano's iron plate ought to offer some value, if only to spare the earth from the destruction of mining and smelting new metal.

I suppose, in the aggregate, discarded beverage cans outweigh piano plates by many thousands of times and so that is where the money is.

For some reason I'm reminded of zoos which serve as old age homes for retired circus animals.