Any piano experts around?

[amazonianwoman]

DD (6) and I (much much older) started piano lessons earlier this year. We're renting a very good quality digital, but it's just not the same as the proper acoustic I play at my piano teacher's house.

I'm taking grade 1 in November, so, although we're both pretty committed, I don't want to spend too much at this stage. Then again, I don't want a duffer.

There's a Knight K10 piano on ebay which looks as if it's in good condition. The serial number dates it at around 1963.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180529287715&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT Here it is. What do you think??

It looks decent, and Kinghts tend to be good pianos. However, the only way to tell whether a piano is any good is to actually play it. Which clearly you can't do. Try looking around where you are? People are always selling pianos.

There are often pianos on our local freecyle - worth a try maybe..?

The thing is that if you are a beginner, you probably won't be able to tell a good piano from a duff. I have a friend who is a professional musician and who has just bought a new grand piano and was demonstrating to me how it sounded so much better than her old one, and I literally could not tell the difference. (Had a few lessons, Grade 1 kind of standard myself!). Why don't you ask your teacher to help you choose? Or you could try calling round some piano tuners and see if any of them would help you choose an instrument in return for the promise of business once you've got it. Our tuner has a sideline in restoring old pianos and selling them on affordably to beginners and I def trust him to be honest about an instruments merits.

Oops dodgy link try again

Have emailed seller to see if I can go to have a look at it.

Have had absolutely all my acquaintances/DH's work colleagues/piano teachers/etc on the case for a couple of months but no luck yet!

Knight are a good make (we have one for DS so I'm biased) But we were able to hear it before we bought, as it was in a piano shop and the chap played a bit on each piano we were interested in to demonstrate them to us. Is there someone you could take with you to try it out? You do need someone who can play reasonably well and who will hear anything duff.