Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum What´s the funniest/silliest thing you´ve experienced/thought while piano-shopping?

...Ended up lost at a garage at wee hours in the night with hubby, a salesman, and (cute) dog.... :rolleyes:

...Thinking of buying a new digital piano to fill the gap between my non 88 keys digi and a new grand....

(Not silly but never thought I would before seeing grands prices) .....Getting a loan to afford one....


....Trying to explain (to a salesman) why his discount was not really a discount (a 16% over the price of a NEW piano, while piano had been used even if it was "just for 3 concerts" (btw, why is it usually 3, not 4 or 2....


And still shopping¡¡¡....

Look forward to hearing your experiences,

Elle

P.S. Switched from wanting a Kawai RX-2 to a Petrof III (till played and heard..ughh) to C. Bechstein (out of budget and too old), to Schimmel and now, maybe a tiny baby grand Petrof V....(good deal)

Um . . .

I could only play a few things when I was piano shopping, so I played them over and over by memory. And badly. I think I drove the dealers nuts.

No, wait. I *know* I drove the dealers nuts.

I was in Cathy Harl's shop hacking away at WTC No. 1 Prelude. I had a memory block and kept getting stuck in the same place in the music. Cathy brought me the music.

She was only being helpful, and having the music *was* helpful, but I was so embarrassed!

Cindy - did you end up buying your piano from her?

Yep! I sure did!

I must admit the piano did sound much better without all of those wrong notes . . .

I've never been piano shopping.

I couldn't play a note when I went piano shopping. It had been over 30 years since I touched a piano and I couldn't remember a thing. People kept telling me to play all these pianos, and I'd know the right one, but I couldn't play a bleeping thing.

So I went and bought a book, "I Used to Play Piano" and the next time we went shopping, I sat down at the piano that I thought I liked and tried to play "Scarborough Fair". It was a weekday afternoon, the place was filled with kids, they had some music class or something. Some girl was playing "Fur Elise" over and over again, and I was playing my little song over and over again, very badly. I kept thinking the salesman would tell me I'd be better off taking up knitting.

Ooops...forgot to mention THOSE ones, driving salesman nuts playing over and over again Für Elise ... plus making mistakes over and over as well¡¡¡

Also, hubby spent 3hours half awake half sleepy dreaming of getting calls from Schimmel, Kawai and others, offering grands¡¡

this is infectious

I looked around online and found a store by me that has a big online selection of music. There is only one location and it is 6 minutes away from me. (how lucky is that) So I go there and just look at pianos and they aren't as expensive as I thought. Some of the uprights were 2-4 thousand.

I recently went to my granparents house where they have a Bladwin Grand and I figured it'd be around 25 thousand. I see the exact same one at this place and it is 45 thousands 0_0

That was quite a shock. Their sheet music selection is great too, at the store.

I was shopping for a clavinova and the salesman was a real show-off. He kept switching the instruments and tones and playing Billy Joel and Elton John stuff, and he wouldn't let me play it. He kept saying he would, but he was so enthralled with himself that he wouldn't stop showing off.

I eventually decided to buy one of the clavinovas from the store where he worked (not because of his showing off!), and when I went to make the purchase, I sat down and started playing part of a Rachmaninoff Prelude that I'd learned. Then I moved on to part of a Beethoven Sonata, then a fast section of a Mozart piano concerto.

The salesman's jaw just dropped and he said sheepishly, "I didn't get the impression that you were a 'real' pianist before," and I was like, "Um, maybe it's because you were such a piano hog that I couldn't get a note in edgewise!"

I had this funny thought this morning, as I was making the coffee, "Some people pay like $5 per day for coffee from that-big-chain-of-bad-coffee-stores. Times 200 days per year equals a lot of money. Think of all the money I'm saving by making my own. In a couple of decades, it will just about equal the cost of the new piano." My wife wasn't buying that line of reasoning and she was even less impressed with, "Think about all the money some people spend on cigarettes. If I don't smoke, I'll save XX dollars and THAT"ll cover the new piano." Never smoked a day in my life, so that argument went no where.

OTOH, she did let me buy the piano.

-thom

Oh, you really should go. Even if you aren't going to buy and even if you can't play. Especially if you really can't play. You've seen the average ilk of piano salesmen here. They deserve it. They find it difficult to work their spiel when you're under the piano on your back inspecting. I'm saving feigning sleep and snoring for the worst weasle. I still go and have been even when I had a piano in every room except the bath and kitchen. Just don't go if you really don't need another piano and just made a bit on a stock trade. You might end up with a concert grand and a smaller grand for another room the same day, nevermind that you already had 3 in one room already. I did. My dining table is under the bed still as I type this. So I now serve Japanese style in the living room. Who needs furniture? :t:

Chickgrand - I've gotta come see your place!

Wow Chickgrand, that is crazy. That'd be one musical household.

Thank you ChickGrand, you make me feel sane.

No. It's just me. And I'm not sure how "musical" I am. And after a time of being pronounced "insane" by family and friends, I pared it back down to just "eccentric" by cutting back to just 3. But there's still no room for the dining table because there are two pianos in there, including the concert Chickering. But the right rococco serpentine-legged rosewood semi-concert or concert grand will bring me back to 4. It's inevitable. :t:

I am like that but...with Tv's....Even more than one per room but will have 2 pianos soon to try and catch up¡¡

Same here. But with those, there are units in the bath and kitchen, too. And all but the kitchen and bath ones have separate sound amplifiers and surround, etc. There are two TVs in the bedroom, side by side. One is often on The Weather Channel (as warranted--like today--interestingly the winds which have been roaring with a rain have suddenly gone dead calm--good day for tornados) or MSNBC (when not in ostrich mode) and the other is nearly always on Turner Classic Movies. The only room that has no TV is the main piano room. There's even TV's in the walk-in closets and a four-inch color in the back seat of the car.

LOL Chickgrand, you need to try some of the sleazier channels, like Fox. That'll cure you of TV. :p

I drove a couple of hours to look at a Petrov IV at a music store. The piano was nice but I didn't want the walnut finish. On the way out I walked through the guitar section of the store. Being a bit of a collector I noticed an unusual Gretsch bass. One that I've been looking for on eBay for a while, which is rare but not terribly collectible. I started toying with the idea of having the salesperson toss in the guitar if I ordered the piano in polished ebony.

What was that about? Buying a $17K piano to get an ugly $400 guitar as part of the swag?

Actually, piano has very nearly cured me. I now go sometimes two weeks without turning one of them on. When I said they were on TWC, MSNBC, and TCM, that's when they're on. I'm now always saying "Huh?" when people mention some current event and people think I must be an idiot (which is fine, because it saves me the breath of telling them that they are instead ). If it doesn't come up here at PW, I likely won't know about it these days. I realized a few days ago that I nearly always get my first news about something here. Pretty scary, isn't it?