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I expect this is largely due to the prevalence of decent-enough quality digital pianos. A school or church no longer needs to deal with a second-hand honky-tonk that needs maintenance and tuning (not to mention several people to move) - they can get a passable digital for a few hundred bucks.

The only market for real pianos these days is with serious professionals, concert venues, and people who use them as furniture.

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The implication of this article is that even the furniture market is limited. You can get some very nice vintage-looking completely unplayable pianos from a Craigslist ad.

I also wouldn't say that a real piano is only for a serious pro. Real pianos are a different instrument from keyboards; I wanted one within two weeks of starting piano lessons. But that brings us to the other half of the equation: New pianos are relatively inexpensive, because manufacturing is increasingly efficient. It's more cost-effective to buy new than to take a chance on rehabilitating a piano from 1962.

EDIT: Incidentally, when I say "relatively inexpensive", I mean "for a piano". There's a very real temptation to stick with electronic keyboards. The temptation is measured in kilodollars.

Nothing is the same, it's true, but for serious practise a digital can be better. The key response and weighting will be consistent (good luck getting that with an old instrument) and the tuning spot on.

I used to be a sceptic, but playing the latest digitals which acoustically model the soundboard, strings and action of a piano, the experience is very impressive. It genuinely does feel like playing the real thing, even if the sound comes through speakers. If I come to buy my own piano, I'd go digital.

I'll have to try a new digital. Part of the problem is that they're a moving target. I am probably judging digitals by the standards of eight or even ten years ago, and that's a mistake.

Any recommendations for digital?

Yamaha. Even an older Yamaha will play well. The proof: try finding a used Yamaha. After watching Craigslist for months, we ended up buying one new for our son, who had been hacking away at a keyboard in the garage for a year, and put in another 6 months of lessons. We waited something like 3 months to get it because of parts shortages in Japan.

http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/piano#ChoosingaKeyboard

Also for parts and service down the road, I tell people to stick with Yamaha, Roland and Korg for < $1200 instruments. You're not likely to find a Kurzweil or Nord used in that price range. Casio's play pretty well, but they've only been making decent weighted key (hammer action) digitals for a few years.

Lots of info at that subreddit FAQ. Also this, about how Yamaha makes lots of models with Graded Hammer Action

http://www.reddit.com/r/piano/comments/x4mw3/need_an_advice_...

We have a Roland HP307, which is already a few years old. It's fantastic - every aspect is customizable, and the modelling is spot on - you can press notes down silently and the strings will resonate when you play other notes.

Get a good quality MIDI controller and use the plethora of awesome physical modelling software to generate any sounds you like. ZynSubAddFX is my personal favourite.

The problem with digital pianos is that they can't fill a room with sound like a physical piano unless you have excellent quality speakers. Most of the digital pianos with built in speakers are pretty weak and it while they are excellent for practice with headphones they won't replace the real thing if you're playing for others to listen.

Also, if you're at least semi-serious about becoming good at piano, you'll want a real one because of the action (and if you're really serious about it, you'll want a grand). Digital pianos, while having improved over previous models, are still not close enough to the feel of a real piano to give you good tactile feedback and therefore good technique.

I'll be building a special room for a grand in my new house, and I'm terrified of the things. I grew up playing upright and when concerts came around that involved a hall and a grand I simply didn't know how to manage the sheer force of sound that comes out. Quite majestic but I agree, if you want to be an accomplished pianist of any level it's the investment you need to make.

Actually, I find that real pianos tend to be more forgiving of sloppy techniques than fake pianos are. In particular, I tend to partially depress keys while my fingers are resting on them. On a digital piano, they will often sound whereas they do not on an traditional piano.

That could be because I learned on a real piano, I acquired sloppy habits that a real piano forgives. Perhaps people learning on a digital would learn different sloppy habits that only a digital would forgive.

Yes. Performance is one area digital pianos will probably never be as good as the real thing. However for practise, a high-quality digital can actually be a boon, since you can set it up to match the acoustics of the instrument you're going to be playing (my housemate, a concert pianist, does this).