I’ve been looking to buy a piano for a while. I played quite a lot when I was younger – started when I was five years old – and want to get back in the groove again. Today, I came across this posting on Craigslist… Moving to California so I have to sell my piano of eight years :( It is made by the Lonsdale Piano Company in Toronto. Dated 1888, and it is a converted player piano.
– via Craigslist
It was this line that really caught my attention, “I play it nearly every day and recorded my album on it back in 2003. It has a beautiful, old, full sound.” Buying a piano is a bit of a crap shoot. Most people that own a piano don’t actually play them all that much and fewer still take good care of them. There are also a lot of low-end cheapo piano’s manufactured in the fifties, sixties and seventies that look great, but sound awful. But, a piano that’s been recorded, I reasoned, is probably a piano that’s been loved and will sound fairly decent.
So, I decided to look into it a bit further.
It turns out that the piano-seller is StephTheGeek – who not only posted MP3 recordings of the album in question, but also writes a pretty good blog. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve met her before, but can’t quite figure out where…) Listening to her recordings, I found that the piano does sound pretty good. So, we decided to buy it. Sort of crazy – buying a piano without ever see it or hearing it first hand. But I figure that sometimes, achieving the worthwhile sometimes takes a leap of faith. Analysis can easily lead to delay and in instances like this, leads to someone else getting the piano that we want.
Stephanie sounds kind of sad about about selling her piano. I’ll have to make sure that we give it a very good home.
