Piano Video Lesson: How Long Do Digital Pianos Last?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. I had somebody ask me recently, how long do digital pianos last? I'm playing a Steinway here, built in the late 1930s, still going strong. We did rebuild it a few years ago, but you know what, a hundred years from now it could be rebuilt again. Pianos can go on forever if they're not completely thrashed from the environment.

But what about digital pianos? You buy a digital piano, you want to know how long is that going to last? Well, you know, it's hard to find good piano technicians, but it's all but impossible to find people to work on digital pianos. Are there people who work on digital pianos? Not so much.

You know, the parts are not readily available, and a lot of things are circuit boards that you end up paying so much money for those circuit boards and then finding anybody to disassemble. It's kind of like when your printer breaks or almost any kind of electronic device. Sadly, they are really disposable. You end up buying another one because you can't find anybody to repair electronics and digital pianos are no exception. So what does go wrong with digital pianos? Generally speaking, unless there's a spike in the current, like your home is hit with lightning or there's some kind of surge of current, your piano should probably do fine for many, many years. What typically is the problem that people have are the key contacts themselves, the mechanical components, not the electronic, because wherever the keys have to come down, there has to be some kind of contact metal to metal.

Typically, if pianos are in a very humid environment or a very dusty environment, eventually you might find certain keys don't play correctly. Maybe you have to hit it a couple of times or you'll play a note and it'll be at full volume because it's not getting the right information. Sometimes, there are optical sensors there and if dust gets in there, even a tiny amount of dust, it can be a nightmare. It may be inconsistent in its performance. Sometimes it might work right, sometimes it doesn't. Can that be fixed? Technically, it could be if you could find somebody crafty enough to figure out how to take the thing apart.

But generally speaking, when that happens, if it's an older instrument, you know what? Things like computer technology and smartphones, they keep getting better and cheaper all the time anyway. So when yours is no longer operating correctly, buying a new one is generally what most people do.

The answer to the question, how long? You certainly, hopefully, unless the environment is really harsh, should be able to get 10 years, I would hope. Maybe a cheaper one or one that's taken around on the road a lot or in a house with smokers where there's a lot of particulate matter in the air. Maybe it would be less than that. Yet, I have friends who have digital pianos they've had for decades still going strong. So it's not always the case that you only get 10 years out of a digital piano. You might get 20 or 25 or more years out of a digital piano. And once again, the environment that the piano is in and the stability of the electrical current, if you want to prolong the life of your digital piano, get a surge protector. Better yet, a UPS, an uninterruptible power supply. Basically, it's a battery that you plug into the wall and out of that, you plug your piano into that. This is a great thing, by the way, for any sensitive electronic equipment because everything is running off the battery all the time. So if the electricity goes off, on, surge, it doesn't matter, it's providing that stable current because the battery is just being charged from the electrical current, but what goes out to your device is from the battery. So that is your foolproof way of avoiding at least one of these causations of digital pianos failing, that is surges of current. Or the electricity goes, you know, gets browned out a little bit, it comes back on. This is a nightmare for electronics and can burn things out.

Sometimes you can do a reset routine. If you've ever had a problem with a musical instrument or any electronic gear, there's what's called initialization or reset. There's both soft reset and hard reset.

A soft reset usually is just like turning it back on, turning it off and back on again, but a hard reset takes it back to the factory spec.

Sometimes there are updates and you'll have to perform those same updates again to get it back, but that's a way that if all else fails, try initialization or reset, a hard reset on your device. If it's not a mechanical issue like I described with the keys collecting dust or corrosion, that could very well help you.

I'd love to hear from all of you, your experiences with digital pianos. Have any of you gotten less than 10 years, less than five years out of your digital piano? If so, what brand was it and were there any mitigating circumstances that you can attribute to the short life that you got out of the piano? And any of you who has like a record amount of time you got from your digital piano, maybe some of you have digital pianos from the 1980s still performing just like they did when they were new. Let's hear from all of you here at LivingPianos .com, your online piano resource. Thanks again for joining me. Robert Estrin.

Thanks for joining us.

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