How to Get Rid of an Old Piano in Massachusetts & New Hampshire

Nobody Wants the Old Piano, and It Weighs 500 Pounds

An old piano is one of the most common things we find in houses across Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and one of the hardest to get rid of. It's the upright in the living room nobody has played since the kids moved out, the spinet in the basement of a parent's house, the console that came with the home when you bought it. You've tried to give it away. Nobody bites.

There's a reason for that, and it isn't just your piano. Here's why old pianos are so hard to get rid of, what the rules are in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and how piano removal actually works.

Why It's So Hard to Give Away an Old Piano

Pianos used to be in almost every home. According to the AP, U.S. acoustic piano sales fell from roughly 350,000 a year in 1923 to about 34,000 in 2022. That means there are far more old pianos out there than people who want one, and most of them are the ones nobody wants: spinets, consoles, and older uprights.

Age is the other problem. A piano typically needs a full rebuild somewhere around the 40 to 60 year mark. Soundboards dry out and crack, and a worn pinblock stops holding the tuning pins, so the piano won't stay in tune no matter how many times it's tuned. On most older uprights, the rebuild costs more than the piano will ever be worth afterward. That's why you see so many free pianos listed online, and why most of them are still sitting there months later.

How Much Does a Piano Weigh?

This is where people get hurt. Typical ranges look like this:

• Spinet: 200 to 300 pounds
• Console: 300 to 400 pounds
• Studio upright: 400 to 500 pounds
• Full upright: 500 to 800 pounds
• Baby grand: 500 to 600 pounds
• Grand: 750 to 900 pounds, and over 1,000 for a concert grand

For a real-world check, Yamaha lists its popular U1 upright at about 503 pounds. Most of that weight is the cast-iron plate inside, which on its own usually runs 150 pounds or more. Uprights are also top-heavy, which makes them easy to tip and dangerous on stairs, especially going down.

That's the part that turns a piano into a professional job. A 500-pound upright on a flat floor is manageable with the right equipment. The same piano at the bottom of a New England basement staircase, or on the second floor of an old triple-decker, is not something to attempt with a couple of friends and a dolly.

Can You Throw Away a Piano in Massachusetts?

Not in one piece. A piano is a mix of materials, and the metal is the part that matters. Massachusetts bans ferrous and non-ferrous metals from landfills and incinerators under its waste bans (310 CMR 19.017), and a piano's cast-iron plate, steel strings, and brass and copper parts all fall into that category. That metal has to be separated and recycled as scrap.

New Hampshire has no state law specific to pianos, but NHDES guidance treats furniture and bulky items as something each town's transfer station handles in its own way. In practice, a whole piano is not something most transfer stations want rolled in the door.

Like everything on our list of items you can't throw away in Massachusetts, that doesn't mean the piano is stuck in your house. It means it has to be taken apart and sent to the right places. We take pianos, and we handle that part.

What About Ivory Keys?

Older pianos often have ivory keytops. Most Western makers stopped using ivory in the early 1970s, and some continued until around 1989. If your piano is older than that, the white keys may be real ivory.

Owning a piano with ivory keys is legal, and so is getting rid of one. Selling ivory is where the rules come in. Federal rules from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allow small amounts of ivory in items like pianos, and the agency has said its 200-gram limit is large enough to cover the key veneers on an 88-key piano. New Hampshire's ivory law, in effect since 2019, exempts ivory that's a fixed part of a musical instrument. Massachusetts has no ivory sales law yet, though a bill is pending at the State House. If you plan to sell an old piano rather than remove it, it's worth knowing which kind of keys you have.

How We Handle Piano Removal

We do the carry, and we plan it before we show up. Send us a photo of the piano and tell us what's between it and the truck: stairs, tight turns, a porch, a narrow hallway. That's what determines how the job goes and what it costs. Because pianos take more time, more muscle, and sometimes disassembly on site, piano removal carries an extra charge, and we'll give you the number up front.

Once it's on the truck, the piano gets broken down. The cast iron, steel, brass, and copper go to scrap metal recycling. The rest goes to disposal. You can see how we sort every load in where your junk goes after we haul it.

When the Piano Is Part of a Bigger Cleanout

We rarely pick up a piano by itself. It usually comes out of an estate, a downsizing, or a house that's being sold, along with furniture nobody wants either. If that's where you are, see our guides to cleaning out a parent's house after they pass away and old furniture removal, or read about a recent estate cleanout in Amesbury, MA. If the piano is in the basement with everything else, our guide to cleaning out a basement full of junk covers doing it all in one visit.

Piano Removal and Disposal Across Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Dumpster Dogs handles piano removal and full-service junk removal across 55+ towns in northeastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and southern Maine. Tell us what you have and where it is, and we'll tell you exactly what it takes to get it out.

With over 700 jobs completed and a 4.9-star rating across 62 reviews, Dumpster Dogs shows up, gets it done, and doesn't cut corners. Call (978) 734-4890 or book online, and send us a photo of the piano and the path out.