A quick internet trawl brings up plenty of pianos at enticingly cheap prices, on auction sites and in classified ads.  Some of them look very nice with the panelled fronts, inlay, and wooden finishes that were common 80-100 years ago. Some even have names you might recognise, and some (particularly from the 1930s-1960s) might seem attractively compact and quirky looking for your family home.   At a few hundred pounds they can seem a very affordable way into owning a piano, but Buyer Beware!Pianos are complex, with structures designed to take a huge amount of tension from the strings, and a huge number of moving parts within their actions.  Treated with respect and given proper routine maintenance a good piano should last you 60-80 years before it requires major restoration work.  However, many of the cheap pianos advertised in online auctions are at least this age, and many are even older, and this is why they are being sold in this way.  Unless you are a piano technician you cannot possibly know whether the instrument will hold it's tuning, whether the soundboard is in-tact, or whether the bridges are free of cracks, and this is all before you start to consider the myriad action parts that wear out over time.Putting these problems right isn't cheap, and is almost certainly going to cost you more than you paid for the instrument.  If the piano requires a new pin-block (which holds the tuning pins in place) you are looking at a complete re-build costing thousands of pounds, but even replacing more 'consumable' items like felt bushings and strings can run into hundreds or more, by which time you would really have been better off putting the money into a better instrument from a piano dealer with a good reputation who will provide proper back-up and support.  Bear in mind, also, that very few of the 'bargain' pianos advertised on auction sites are worth re-building or having extensive work done to them.  Unless they were amongst the best of their day (Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner, Bosendorfer, Grotrian-Steinweg, Ibach, Erard, Pleyel etc.), most of these very elderly pianos will never be worth what you could spend on having them 'saved' and the majority of them still won't compete with a good, more modern instrument.A piano is a long-term investment.  Buying something with little life left in it now, is only going to bring the day closer when you need to buy something better.  We understand the reasons why cheaper, older pianos are attractive, particularly when you are not sure whether you or your children will take to playing the piano, but there are better solutions.1. Consider renting a piano.  We offer rental schemes on new and second hand upright pianos below £3,000 with affordable monthly payments and the option to buy the instrument with all or most of your rental charges deducted from the price after the first 3 or 6 months.  If you still don't want to buy at that point, you can still carry on renting or send the piano back.  This is a low-risk way of trying the piano and, very importantly, you will have a piano to use which has been carefully prepared in our workshops - far more encouraging to play for a beginner than something that doesn't sound nice.2. If you want to buy and can afford to stretch the budget, come and have a look at our range of pianos.  We normally have second hand uprights starting from around £1,200 upwards and brand new pianos from £2,590 - all carefully checked over and prepared to ensure rewarding ownership.  If you later decide to upgrade, we will always give you a fair part-exchange deal when you come back to us.  Paying that little bit more will give you much better peace of mind  and make piano ownership more rewarding.3. Consider a digital piano.  Kawai and Yamaha both make very good digital pianos for starters, below £1,000, and if the budget is tight one of these can make a lower-risk and more rewarding purchase than an old piano purchased from an online auction with lots of problems.  It is also something which you may find useful to keep elsewhere in the house, when the day comes for you to buy a good acoustic.Whichever path you take to get started, come and visit us at 126 Deansgate.  We can find solutions for all kinds of circumstances, and take away the pitfalls, leaving you to enjoy your first steps into making music.  We will give you honest and simple advice and we are very clear about the pros and cons of each route you might take.  We will also give you sensible advice on how to maintain your instrument so that it continues to give you pleasure and, with our own specialist Tuning and Repairs department, we can look after all the maintenance for you with easy email reminders when tuning is due and discounts for having your piano tuned more than once a year.  It is one of the reasons why we are still selling pianos 156 years after we first opened our doors.