Buying our first piano but don't know where to start

I think it also depends on your house and where the piano could go. We are in a terraced house, and the only place a piano could go was in front of a radiator. We also only have one living room, where the piano is. We have a Clavinova. It had taken DH from complete beginner to grade 8.

I like my Yamaha DGX660.

I thought it said 'Buying our first potato' 😂

I second @CoteDAzur

An electric piano, good as they are, is not the real thing. You can't make the same sound and you don't get nearly as much joy out of it.

Strongly advise against online courses, specially for beginners. You need solid technique to build on, you can't get that without a real person giving you feedback and picking up on things.

You can get some great second hand pianos from a specialist shop, rental is a good idea if you don't commit to buying. I know that if someone say goes on a work placement for a year abroad, they will rent their piano out through a piano shop while they are away at really reasonable rates.

Family of piano players here. I would recommend going to a specialist piano shop and choosing a 2nd hand piano from there. They will have made sure that it is fully functional and if any problems arise, you can go back to them. 2nd hand pianos can be even better than brand new ones these days - e.g. because they were made in Germany with quality materials and workmanship, not in India by the lowest bidder.

I wouldn't recommend online courses. There is no substitute for a teacher sitting next to you, who can hear every nuance and whose playing you can imitate. During the lockdown, my lessons went online and they were practically useless.

I would also recommend a real piano. Electric keyboards can't replicate the feel and resonance of a real piano. We also have an electric piano with earphones, but that is used only when one of us will work on a difficult piece for hours on a Sunday, for example. The real playing, with the nuances and emotion is done on the real piano.

I have a rock jam keyboard (88 keys - weighted) and am learning with the Simply Piano app (first month free with the keyboard purchase). In a nutshell, the app guides the learning through listening to what is being played and scoring/guiding accordingly. It quickly progresses to playing songs (contemporary and otherwise).I am absolutely loving it - I'm a rather cough late learner but am totally hooked.

We had a basic accoustic but gave it away because it wouldn't stay reliably in tune so now have a Yamaha clavinova. Dh would love a proper accoustic again but the upkeep is not cheap.

We have a very well known and experienced piano teacher in our area and we asked his advice. He knew of a local piano shop doing 0% credit so got one from there.

I returned to playing piano last year and am at a reasonable standard. We have a piano chat thread on here for adult learners. I bought myself a Kawai digital, and it’s really lovely, properly weighted keys, feels wonderful to play, and being able to play with headphones and not bother anyone else is a massive advantage. There’s really nothing wrong with good quality modern digital pianos for normal home use now, and they are fine for learners.

I have a Casio digital piano, just started learning in January and decided on digital with weighted keys and a stand mainly because I don't know enough about "proper" pianos and risked buying a dud.
They're inexpensive and ok to learn on, I'd love a nice upright or a baby grand one day (but I've only recently passed grade 1 so I'm a way off being able to do them justice!)

We have a Roland FP30 digital piano. It’s really good - I am v impressed at how good digital pianos are now. We bought it for my son to start lessons age around 9.

We are in a terrace and it took a while to rearrange rooms so it has a permanent home in my sons bedroom, so we didn’t want to go with a “proper” piano. It honestly doesn’t feel like a compromise.

It plays v well (we went and tested loads out in a local big music shop and that was v much worth doing as we preferred this one to another we’d been considering) and being able to use it with headphones is great. Also, it’s good that my son can record the left hand and play it back while he practices the right (if I’m not there to help). Also, while he uses it in proper piano mode 95% of the time, it does have an option where you can invoke eg string orchestra, which hugely amuses him when he plays his pieces in different “voices” for fun sometimes.

Try some out - definitely not like the old keyboards at school. The keys are properly weighted and the sound is good. I imagine a very experienced pianist would have their own thoughts, but for our purposes it is really great.

We started with an older, but good, electric piano which we got from ebay, with weighted keys - it cost £150, and we sold it again a few years later when we upgraded to a 'real' piano for the same amount.

And digital pianos can be used with headphones too!

Sorry, that isn't quite right, the keyboard is the same size as a full piano but has no back or bottom bit so much easier to store and manoeuvre.

We bought a digital piano for my son, after borrowing one for a year off friends to make sure he was serious about it. It's brilliant. Weighted exactly the same as a proper piano but doesn't require the maintenance and is the size and weight of a keyboard rather than a piano so he's got it in his bedroom. It cost £400 but they do seem to really hold their value second hand.

Regular retuning isn’t expensive, about £50 once a year or so. Although I take the point above about knackered old pianos!

I would have thought the space required is a key deciding factor - pianos take up more space than keyboards that can be stored away.

Be very, very wary of second hand cheap pianos. They can cost considerably more to fix than you pay for them. If they are not in good shape they may not be tunable at all and need restringing. For reference, I had an old piano (family heirloom type thing) restored and it cost over 5 grand. The piano itself is probably worth less than that!

If you decide to buy a second hand piano make sure you have someone you trust (a tuner or restorer) look at it first and tell you what needs doing.

Clavinova type electric pianos are OK. They need to have weighted keys rather than just be a keyboard.

You could also look at renting. Long term rentals can be fairly cheap and it does not commit you as much as buying something, if it really takes off for you all you can upgrade to a better model.