Where Do Pianos Get Laid To Rest?

Beginning stages of reducing items in our home for a potential move. We have a piano that we bought used and pretty old for our 10 year old daughter. She’s 32 now. So the piano is quite old, probably not worth much and we haven’t tuned it in several years since she doesn’t live at home anymore.

We can try and give it away of course. Offer it free locally, hope someone can take it away. But if no one is interested, how/where can we get rid of it???

Where do pianos go to die? :musical_keyboard:

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Just ran into this organization:

https://pianosforeducation.org/donate-piano/

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We have an old piano that was given to my daughter to learn to play on years ago. I was recently quoted $600 to get rid of it, so we are continuing to hold onto it for now. I need to save up to trash it at this point.

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There is a place here that comes and picks up things that have no value and no one wants. They then put it in their store front and charge people to come in and smash it. They just came and picked up an old broken copier from my work place. We got rid of it for free and they can make money off of someone smashing it. Do you have something similiar near you?

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Some friends made a decision to quickly downsize last month, and they had a piano that had to go. Their daughter had great success giving it away with online ad (maybe Facebook Marketplace?) A grandmother had her granddaughter try it out and then paid for movers to transport. Win/Win :grin:

Some piano stores will come get old pianos to use as teaching tools for piano re-furbishers.

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The estate sale company thinks they can sell my parents’ grand piano and old organ, but I have my doubts. We will see!

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Maybe see if a local church might want it?

I had this problem nine years ago. I got lucky and some friends paid to have it moved to their house. That was after calling around and offering it to all sorts of places for several months, however.

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I tried them when we were letting our piano go, but they are quite picky (age, condition, manufacturer). We had a nice piano, but no one wanted it. So I called my church & asked if they knew anyone who might want a piano. My minister actually wanted it - it was much nicer than the old family piano he had inherited (and he found someone who wanted that piano!).

We did have a Salvation Army & a Habitat Restore that would have taken it, but we would have had to get it there. That was not an option for us.

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Nice find - unfortunately our brand is not listed/accepted.

Yeah I don’t expect this to be easy! I’m not sure any church or piano store would want it - I’ll def try first to just clean it up and see if a family wants it .

Obviously though sometimes one just becomes a junker. Then what?

We bought our piano from a very small local company which has only two employees. They are a husband and wife who are also of course the co-owners of the company. They buy old pianos which are in dis-repair, fix them, and then sell them. The wife (who is the one we still see regularly since she is also the piano tuner) has a personal piano which is a classic but which required a LOT of work to get it to work properly.

Of course many pianos would not be worth fixing. However, I would be inclined to check with experts before tossing it.

I would much rather have someone take it away for free and fix it and sell it, rather than have someone take it away and dump it.

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Ask a piano tuner.
Try forums on Piano World website.
One would ask, does it hold a tune, and what are transportation costs?
I’ve heard of some cases being repurposed for a digital, or turned into a desk.
It’s tough competition when digital pianos don’t need tuning and are easier to transport.

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Depending upon how much the piano is otherwise worth, if it is otherwise a good piano this too can be fixed.

Sometimes the pegs get lose so that they slip. A few slipping pegs can be replaced by very slightly larger pegs. If there are a lot of slipping pegs, they can be super glued in place, and then somehow loosened enough so that they can still be adjusted but stay stiff.

Our upright had to be “tipped” in order to have slipping pegs super glued. I thought of drunk university students tipping cows (which to me is cruel), but in fact the husband came with a contraption that the piano was placed on so that an upright piano could be tipped on its side to be fixed.

There is absolutely no way that I would ever consider trying this myself. This is only for professionals, and only for pianos that are good enough to be worth the effort and the cost.

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We promised D2 that the (then) brand new Yamaha baby grand would be hers someday if she kept with lessons until graduation. She did and would like it except she lives far far away and will probably never have space for it. Beware what you promise.

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Mine isn’t listed either; I have a beautiful 50yo Jesse French that still sounds great. DD still thinks she wants it some day if she buys a house. I hate to think of it winding up as a prop or worse yet in the landfill :cry:

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We’ve promised our Steinway to our daughter. Since it belonged to my husband’s beloved piano teacher, she knows she’d better figure out a way to make room for it. I know she will. She comes to our house just to play it.

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There’s a huge difference between your piano and ours. Ours will probably end up as a real estate photo prop.

It’s still sad. A Yamaha is a fine instrument.

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