Music

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Pianos from JR Reid

The piano specialists
J Reid & Sons
‘We don’t get many high-class customers up here in the badlands,’ laughs proprietor John Gregory. It’s probably because they wouldn’t expect to find Britain’s largest piano store in the heart of Tottenham’s grim, grey, low-rise council estates. Step through a blue garage door to the left-hand side of two large Georgian terraced houses and you’re suddenly dazzled by thousands of pounds’ worth of pianos: brand new Bösendorfers, Blüthners, Kawais and Yamahas; reconditioned Steinways and Bechsteins, shiny new Czech uprights (Petrof, Weinbach, Rieger-Kloss), and scores of restored second-hand models.

North-east London was once full of piano factories, using timber that came up the River Lea on barges, metal components tooled in Camden and the furniture-making nous from Stoke Newington and Shoreditch. Reid’s store-rooms are filled with reconditioned pianos with local marques like Brasted, Challen and Barrett & Robinson. Now all are extinct, and J Reid’s operation remains the only local vestige of this once-huge industry.

Competition from China, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia has all but killed off the British piano industry. English brands like Broadwood are now built in Malaysia and even quality German firms like Steinway are in trouble. Reid sells a new, Chinese-made Dorffman upright for £1,200 and a comparable German-made Rönisch for around £6,000. ‘With the German model, the wood, the materials and the work quality will be better,’ says Gregory, ‘but it’s difficult to convince people that it’s five times better.’

Reid’s own-brand pianos – Reid & Son – are built in Korea but the busy workshop gives the impression that there’s still a thriving factory on the premises. There are ten full-time and four part-time technicians who repair, refit and restring pianos, with scores of jobs on the go.

Recently the long-term decline in piano sales has very slightly reversed, but much of this revival comes from electronic pianos. Gregory concedes that they’ve got quite good lately, and stocks a few, but points out that digital pianos have a built-in obsolescence. ‘The parts needed to repair these things won’t exist in two years’ time,’ he says. ‘An acoustic piano will last for several lifetimes and will often increase in value.’

He is irritated by internet competition but believes that good music shops are eBay-proof. ‘We’re always dealing with people who’ve picked up a second-hand piano on eBay for £300. They’ll take it home, get in a tuner and find that it needs restringing, or that the soundboard is cracked. That can be more than a thousand pounds-worth of work. If they’d come here in the first place they could have bought a perfectly good, second-hand upright for less than a grand.’

J Reid Pianos, 184 St Ann’s Rd, N15 (020 8800 6907/jreid-pianos.co.uk) Seven Sisters tube. Mon-Fri 8am-5.30pm, Sat 10am-5pm.