Thank you reddie and deminc for the advice. After calling a few more second hand dealers, I am still quite skeptical. One of the salesman told me that the 20-30 year old Yamaha piano are all in original condition, meaning that their parts has not changed for that long! Is it really possible that the parts do not wear and tear. Such information from the salesman raises more doubt then helped.


Honestly, while shopping around, I see so many Yamaha and Kawai in the second hand shops, some of them collected dust, many second hand shops are now one-man show which don’t gives you a feeling that the piano market is so red hot that the stock can be cleared that fast. I may even dare to speculate that the pianos there may have their heater off for the past few years! Are the expansive second hand pianos really worth it? If the Yamaha and Kawai second hand market is bad, then will there still be any resale value? Without the resale value, why pay for a brand new Yamaha U1 which cost double the price of a brand new China brand and in the end, both potentially has no resale value.

Any comments?

Hi everyone,


I am shopping for a piano for my children (9 and 7). After shopping at Piano Master, Cristofori, Jeslyn Piano World and Rener Piano, I am more confused than clear. The only conclusion I gotten is that Pearl River and Cristofori pianos do not sound good.

Would greatly appreciate if anyone can shed some light to the questions below.

1) Reading from internet and hearing from the sales from Renner, Yamaha pianos are no longer made in Japan. All are from Indo or China. Is that true? Or only selected models from Japan?

2) When shopping, I saw some pianos which are only few years old but the mechanism inside looks damp and dusty while I saw some >10 year old pianos which internally seems new. Is it because they are recon?

3) Why are people buying >20 years old Yamaha or Kawai? Isn’t it natural that they will wear and tear and they would have changed many hands and many reconditions which eventually = Made in Singapore? Is it really worth the risk to pay >$5k for them especially when I can see so many ran down, upside down and abandon pianos in the 2nd hand shop. It gives me the impression that the 2nd hand shops did a lot of changes to the old pianos before reselling them.

4) Can we trust the warranty from the 2nd hand dealers? How many of them closed down recently? Any so-called established and reputable ones?

5) When recommending us the Hailun, the sales person compared the sound with a second hand Yamaha U1 and a Petrof. Its quite obvious that HL125 has a better sound than U1 and Petrof is the best among the 3. The difference is significant even an amateur like me can tell. Is that just a sales gimmick? Could it be that the Yamaha in the showroom has some problem?

6) Is the material of the wood structure important? The sales from Cristofori told us that all new pianos are now made using MDF processed wood which is more termite resistance. Anyone knows the material used to make the new Yamaha, Kawai and Hailun.

Having a headache now. hahaha. Please help. thanks.