[bluefoxicy]

Pictures can be clicked







I am less rich now.  No, wait, it seems I'm more rich... money is pretty worthless.

[bluesman]

You must have been a very good boy...Santa took good care of you this year.

Very nice gitfiddle you have there. 

I recently purchased Martin D16-GT...I wish I had more time to play it.

[bluefoxicy]

You must have been a very good boy...Santa took good care of you this year.

Very nice gitfiddle you have there. 

I recently purchased Martin D16-GT...I wish I had more time to play it.

Yeah, I was saving up for a piano... then found out that all the DPs I was looking at were crap and I wanted a CA-63 (Kawai) for $4000.  Rather than learn piano for now, I'll stick to Go and learn classical-style fingerpicking (I've been wanting to learn to finger).  I've also started replacing my guitars with fewer, better ones.

Which means I now have a longer term financial plan including an emergency fund, paying off my car loan sooner than later, and saving up for an expensive piano.  ... a cheap piano.  $4000 isn't expensive for a piano.  Have you actually shopped pianos?  I might be able to get the CA for around $3000.

So maybe next year.

That Martin is a nice steel string.  I got one of the best spanish guitars I could find

[bluesman]

I think you'd be amazed at the prices of used pianos.

Ask a piano teacher or a piano tuner if they know of any pianos for sale or if there are certain manufacturers you should look for. Search the newspaper or check with the music department of your local college. Colleges periodically retire instruments and sell to the public at reduced prices.

Look for more than just a piece of furniture when shopping for a used piano. The old adage "you can't judge a book by its cover" especially applies. If a piano's beautiful case is disguising a wreck of an instrument inside, it may be more trouble than it's worth. Find out who owned the piano and if possible, how often it was played.

Determine the age of a piano by locating the manufacturer's name, usually located on the outside of the piano, and the serial number, usually engraved on a plate inside the piano. With this information, you can look up the date of manufacture using Piano World's online reference, check the manufacturer's website, or have a piano tuner research the instrument for you.

Listen to the piano before you commit. Any piano, new or used, should have pleasant midtones, rich bass and clear treble tones. Bring along a friend who plays well to give you an honest opinion of the sound quality.

Depress the right foot pedal and try each key, including the black keys. Every key should respond instantly to your touch, and the key action should be even throughout the keyboard. Take note of any keys that seem to stick.

Contact a certified piano technician to thoroughly go over the piano when you think you have found a good one. Because pianos have around 8,000 parts, it's well worth it to pay a technician to evaluate a used piano before you buy it. Look for a certified member of the Piano Technicians Guild.

Have the piano technician consider the piano's value, and determine whether it is worth the asking price. Ask the tuner to estimate how much work the piano needs to make it satisfactory, and whether it can be brought into tune. Factor in his service costs before making your offer to the seller.

These are the "how to's" I copied from a reliable site that I believe to be credible.

[nicneufeld]

You might just pick up a keyboard in the mean time.  A few hundred can get you a surprisingly versatile little device, and if you get an even cheaper USB midi controller instead, there are some softsynths out there and sampled pianos that sound better than just about any real piano either of us will ever be able to afford.

Nice guitar, I need to restring my nylon-string.  I wouldn't buy any guitar any more without electronics in it, but that's just a pragmatic concern for performance, I suppose if you're pursuing it as a hobby (much as I am tentatively pursuing hindustani music), bunging a piezo in there isn't really helpful.

[bluefoxicy]

I think you'd be amazed at the prices of used pianos.

When I was learning last year I had no instrument to practice on.  I played on crap uprights, I played on one my parents had, I played on a nice $3000 Royal, I've played Kawai K2 uprights, Yamahas...

I used to sneak into the voice hall when no one was there to practice.

On a Kawai RX-6 7 foot concert grand piano kept in perfect registration and perfect tune.

The CA-51 I played has the exact same action, weighted better, even smoother than the RX-6.  It's mimicking the 9 foot Kawai EX $180,000 concert grand.  It also uses individual key samples at 4 volumes from the Kawai EX, along with an acoustics modeling program that uses a huge amount of data gathered from a technical analysis of the Kawai EX (involving an acoustics room and a lot of microphones and thousands of hours of recording and analyzing and lots of math).

It basically mimics the $180,000 concert grand's feel perfectly, and the sound almost-perfectly (the sound yes, the volume maybe, the presence not so much because there's no giant sound board pushing all that air at you).  Dampers are tracked and the piano behaves exactly like a physical piano.

The CA-63 has replaced its price slot at an MSRP of $4000 (information that was hard to find), street price all I can find is "POA" but people have said anywhere from $2500 to $3500.

Also, the instrument is gorgeous.

It's small, weighs about 200 pounds, and fits in my little third floor apartment.  

I'll of course be playing one when I'm out purporting to actually buy it; not buying something I haven't played, heard, felt, and seen.  But these things will easily last 15-20 years and I want a permanent piano, not an upgrade path.  The dealer can supply repair services; the keys are grand piano escapements with sensors at the end (this is why it feels like a 9 foot EX concert grand), and easily maintained (as much as a physical acoustic piano).

Good enough for a couple grand?  

[yugamrap]

Search the newspaper or check with the music department of your local college. Colleges periodically retire instruments and sell to the public at reduced prices.

+1 We got our piano (a Baldwin Hamilton) a few years ago from a private school that had a deal with a local piano dealer where they replaced all their practice room pianos annually, and somehow used the sale as a fundraiser for their music program.  The dealer handled the sale & delivery and included a tuning.  It's a great piano, and we got a very good deal.  It was a little like getting a really good car coming back off a lease.

[weazletoe]

+1 We got our piano (a Baldwin Hamilton) a few years ago from a private school

Hey man! Is your refrigerator running?

[tschmidlin]

freecycle typically has an upright piano in our area ever y 3-6 months or so.

[jaybeerman]

it seems I'm more rich... money is pretty worthless.

Congrats you just figured out something that the majority of the world has yet to grasp.  IMO, music is one of the best things life has to offer.  Making/playing your own (music) is even better.  Buying a classical guitar was the beginning of the end for me.  After a few months of playing I had an overwhelming urge to do more, and ended up going with this - http://notionmusic.com/products/notion3.html 
I'm still trying to figure out where to put a piano though, time to build a new house

[loopy]

hey bfi, nice choice on that nylon.  How long you been playing? 

My daughter got a Martin LX1 for christmas.  she has been in violin for 2 years abut wanted to switch to guitar to play music she likes.  I was sweating the idea of getting a Martin for a 9 year old.  what the f##k tho right?  The alternative in the 3/4s sized were cheap plastic china beginner guitars with wobbly tuners and structural neck issues.  Those are the kinda guitars that would make someone not want to pick it back up because they never stay in tune. 

[bluefoxicy]

it seems I'm more rich... money is pretty worthless.

Congrats you just figured out something that the majority of the world has yet to grasp.

Money is worthless.  It represents nothing but greed.  It does not represent wealth, it does not represent hard work, it does not represent worth.  We only part with money when we really, really want something; and even then it's hard, because we want more money.

1.3 million haitians were helped after the earthquake a while back.  Donations came in from all over.  What did you donate?  A dollar?  You and 130 million other people, and every one of 1.3 million hatians got $10 worth of rice (a month's supply of food at least).  A dollar is nothing; 130 million dollars didn't happen here.  There are 6 billion people in the world, 300 million just in America; what happened here was a small fragment of those people giving care and aid, not money.  Money is all they had to give, but it seemed to them the conduit to do something.

Or so we'd like to believe.  Mostly it was just hype, and the cool thing to do at the moment.

 IMO, music is one of the best things life has to offer.  Making/playing your own (music) is even better.  Buying a classical guitar was the beginning of the end for me.  After a few months of playing I had an overwhelming urge to do more, and ended up going with this - http://notionmusic.com/products/notion3.html  
I'm still trying to figure out where to put a piano though, time to build a new house

Nice.

As for a piano, I do say look at the digitals if you can't fit/afford a good acoustic.  The $15000 uprights (Kawai K-9) aren't as good as the $4000 digitals (Kawai CA-63 or CA-93), a sad fact.  The CA-93 is some 5 feet x 3 feet x 1.5 feet.  Roland also makes an (ugly) $5000 V-Piano I don't like as much (but the feel is nice), and there are other offerings out there; Kawai dominates this market though, tbh.  Yamaha makes a full sized baby grand that's all digital and has real hammer action, but it's expensive and huge.

hey bfi, nice choice on that nylon.  How long you been playing?  

My daughter got a Martin LX1 for christmas.  she has been in violin for 2 years abut wanted to switch to guitar to play music she likes.  I was sweating the idea of getting a Martin for a 9 year old.  what the f##k tho right?  The alternative in the 3/4s sized were cheap plastic china beginner guitars with wobbly tuners and structural neck issues.  Those are the kinda guitars that would make someone not want to pick it back up because they never stay in tune.  

My Cordoba C9 ($800; there is a C10 for $1000) is all-wood construction, solid back and sides, solid top, solid neck, solid fretboard, bone nut, bone saddle, carved ebony rosette with mother of pearl inlays, the works.  When you tune it, just a slight nudge on the tuners adjusts the tune; the tuners are very fine, but the nut and saddle are so smooth that the string tension stays the same across the whole string (no tuning issues from excess tension behind the nut eventually slipping) and the tuners are machined so tight that they have no play when up-tuning (any tuner motion produces string motion) and they slide very smoothly.

I may still spend money to have the guitar set up.  The intonation is slightly flat. We're talking 1/10 of a Hz off at fret 12, something sensitive electronics pick up on... it's still "in tune" and the intonation is "correct," just not "perfect."

By all means, spend $300, $500, $1000 on a guitar for a beginner; if it's a $200 Yamaha, good for you, get it a $50 set-up and you're set (Yamaha makes good gear).  You did the right thing avoiding the garbage guitars that nobody is going to want to play, with unbelievably high action and all.  You in no way have to get a $1000 guitar, but it's not the most horrible decision you can make by any stretch.

I find my full scale classical quite small

Oh, and 3 years I think.  Maybe 4 now.  Yes I think 4, I'm not very good... can sing and play Fullmoon and Basketcase and sort of play the Auctioneer song....  I want to learn fingerpicking, hence classical style.  My first guitar was a $150 Epiphone Les Paul 2 that sucked, then a $800 Ibanez S470DXQM that I no longer want... I have an Ibanez AE20L acoustic now which I want to get rid of in favor of likely a cheap Yamaha steel string modern.  I want a Paul Reed Smith SE Singlecut tobacco burst stoptail guitar for an electric, and I'll rid myself of the Ibanez S.

[nicneufeld]

Congrats you just figured out something that the majority of the world has yet to grasp.

Money is worthless.  It represents nothing but greed. 

To paraphrase an old brewboard joke...you're absolutely correct, completely worthless.  I'll send you my address so you can forward the stuff to me for proper disposal.

[oscarvan]

Korg N1.......

Music is a must........Check out the band.......

http://www.woodenshoemusic.com/EP/Home.html

[passlaku]

Man, that rosette is really nice; as are the mahogany tuners.  Scott Tenant is a bad ass, and the LAGQ is absolutely great.  I have had that Pumping Nylon for 10 years and it still kicks my butt.  I don't play as much as I used to (I got my classical guitar degree in 1996), but am struggling through Brower's "Un Dia de Noviembre."  If you get a chance pick up the Music for Tenant's "Wild Mountain Time."  That is a great piece.