I was recently asked this very question by a customer who had been looking into their Pleyel upright piano, and another looking at a 1800s Steinway upright.
From their research into pianos they found that the general feeling from "online" experts was that this is the case, all old pianos are scrap.
As a piano restorer the answer to the question is a resounding no! It is like saying all old cars are rubbish based upon things like the Allegro, or Princess, Lada etc.
I always say that all pianos are like wines, you get good periods and bad periods from the different fine makers, what was a bad production era for one maker would have been a peak time for another, like wines pianos are affected by regions, only in the case of pianos they are often affected by global events in that part of the world and just like wines some piano makers were just bad at making pianos.
Of course just like wines and cars, how the piano is looked after and where it is stored impacts the instrument as well.
So yes it is true that there were a lot of poorly built pianos in the past, same as today! But in the trade we generally do not deal with such instruments, we prefer the high end pianos which are worthy of restoration, another reason I am always saying buy from a dealer or restorer and take a technician not tuner with you to inspect the piano.
But at this point I will say it is true that unlike many other instruments pianos do not age well which is why we are so particular about the pianos we will restore.
So when hearing these statements you have to bare in mind that yes many pianos are scrap, but Steinway, Bluthner, Bosendorfer, Bechstein which we consider to be the top four piano makers were all building fine pianos well over fifty years ago and some of these pianos will sell for over £100,000. and most of their older pianos are far better than a lot of the pianos bring built today, including those built by Yamaha.
Then you had other great makers around the world, Pleyel, John Broadwood, John Brinsmead, Scheidmayer, Richard Lipp, Schimmel, Challen, Gors & Kallmann, Welmar, Petrof, Ibach, Schiedmayer and many, many more that all built fine instruments but just did not aim for the concert stage and their older pianos are worthy of restoring and refurbishing and in many cases their bigger concert grands can sell upwards of £70,000, many of these makers are also still producing pianos today and again a lot of their older pianos can be better than whats being produced today. Sadly some brands like Challen have been bought and are now produced by inferior piano makers, yet others that started of as fine pianos, fell into the hands of bad piano makers are now made by the likes of Bechstein, Zimmerman being one such brand.
But you also had the lesser makes, Boyd, Allison, Normelle, Duck Son and Pinker, Hamilton, Moon, and then we have the stencil pianos, which traditionally were brands that were put onto cheap pianos, often shops would have cheap pianos branded with their name.
British Straight Strung overdamper pianos by non reputable makers and stencil pianos were made right in the UK upto the 1940s and are certainly not worth restoring, but a Straight strung, over damper Bluthner is quite a valuable instrument, the straight strung Bechsteins were mainly under damper and have a very nice tone, even a straight strung John Broadwood have a very nice sound. The best straight strung over damper pianos I have worked on have been produced by John Brinsmead and were worthy of better later pianos. The big difference in these pianos is how the soundboard is fitted, the better pianos have spruce with a diagonal grain where as the cheap pianos tended to use paralyn pine with a horizontal grain.
(Bechstein Straight Strung, note the angled grain on the soundboard)
(British Straight Strung, note the horizontal grain on the soundboard)
(British Straight Strung, Over Damper note the wood pank at the top this is a 3/4 frame not full frame)
(3/4 frame British over Strung piano, note the horizontal grain on soundboard)
(German under damper action, overstrung with full frame)
Yet an over strung, under damper Moore and Moore piano, which were ok pianos but not worth restoring built in London with a full frame will have nothing on any of the above higher quality straight strung pianos by makers like Bechstein.
In my experience most pianos from Austria and Germany even many from France (pre WW1) are amazing pianos, even their cheap range of pianos are often worthy of some work and when properly restored their high end lesser known brands of piano will put any Yamaha to shame despite not being a well known brand. I rebuilt one a few years ago and the child was after a Yamaha, when the finished piano was returned the child was shocked how much better it was compared to the Yamahas at their school.
So why do people make this claim?
Its pretty simple. Today's piano restoration training is all about the modern pianos so technicians are not learning about the high end older instruments, some will go down the route I took and carry on learning from masters who will then teach them about these older pianos, but most will set up as piano tuners with basic, little or no restoration experience and with minimal repair skills so will end up doing more harm than good (have seen this ith my own eyes when I worked in a piano shop when I was sixteen, plus having undone some awful repairs, and people promoting themselves on the internet).
(a bad repair undertaken on a 1904 Steinway by a restorer, one of many bad repairs found on this piano)
Then we have the internet masters who watched a youtube video, bought some cheap tools on Amazon etc, downloaded a tuning app and have decided that they now know how to tune and repair pianos and that they are piano experts, one banding himself as “the piano doctor”, several has gone down this route despite not even being able to play the piano, the chances are that the person they are "learning from" online will have done the same thing. Or they did a weekend class at a questionable piano dealership like one very near myself that employs a technician of questionable repute who has decided they can make money teaching piano tuning etc and the dealer gets a load of "repaired" pianos to sell and was paid for the Luxury by renting out the space and lending the pianos.
These then poorly trained people will setup as a tuner, they also may then set up youtube channels inspiring others into becoming bad piano technicians.
The result is we have people who know very little about pianos setting up as skilled and trained piano technicians and tuners that are telling people that all pianos over fifty years old are scrap and as I have witnessed myself are then condemning perfectly good pianos including valuable perfectly serviceable Steinway pianos, again I went to evaluate a Steinway grand piano that had been deemed unreliable, but now holds tuning and the action needed a clean and service. Yes there are things to do in the future, but it was not scrap..
Lastly there are the dealers that just want to sell young shiny pianos so buy up the Yamahas from online, or restored and ship them over to then sell and anyone thats looking for an older piano , or to get their piano restored will get told "all older pianos are scrap".
But on the whole having enquired making out that I am a buyer I discovered that most people saying this are looking at seriously older pianos which are nearer to one hundred years old, they are happily working on and selling pianos from the nineteen sixties and seventies ignoring the age because they have high gloss and polyester cases so look younger to the untrained eye.
One dealer told me that a 1950s Welmar they were selling was from the 1990s, they opened up the case all that I saw inside from the branding on the action, design on the frame told me it was much older, from the case and key tops I dated it to the 50s when I looked up the serial number it was 1957.
So no, not all pianos over fifty years old are scrap.
As always my advice as always is take a proper experienced technician with you when looking at any piano of any age, even brand new.
I have been hired to play on some shocking brand new pianos, delivered by another shop very near me in Surrey that honestly have been in an unplayable condition and horrendously out of tune, I had to use my keyboard instead as the piano was so bad, these were brand new pianos from China that had been delivered to the venue in that condition, they needed unpacking and setting up before delivery, that did not happen, then they charged the client for setting it up so it was playable! Yet in other venues I play on 100 year old John Broadwood pianos with zero issues.
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