Music & Instruments
Buy and sell music and instruments in Costa Rica.
A pair of speakers that worked every weekend for a discomóvil, a button accordion tuned for norteño, a digital piano bought for lessons that stopped after a year: musical gear in Costa Rica changes owners more often than it wears out. New and pre-owned instruments and sound equipment are both listed, from a beginner’s controller still in its box to a guitar with decades of playing in it. Almost everything here can be tested in a few minutes, so ask the seller to have it set up and switched on when you arrive.
Accordions, decks, guitars and keyboards, and how each one ages:
an accordion lives or dies by its bellows and reeds, so accordions are judged by ear and by air as much as by looks. DJ equipment is electronics first: a controller is only as useful as the software it runs and the speakers it feeds. Guitars split into nylon-string classicals and steel-string and electric models, and pianos and keyboards into portable keyboards and digital pianos with weighted keys. Drum kits, violins, trumpets and PA speakers have no branch of their own, so they are listed here directly.
A button accordion in the right key, a controller for the right software:
most mistakes here are about compatibility rather than quality. A diatonic button accordion plays in fixed keys, written as three notes such as GCF or FB♭E♭, and norteño and vallenato players lean towards different tunings. Buy in the key of the music you want to play, or the songs you learn will never sit under your fingers. A piano accordion is chromatic and heavier, and suits someone who already reads music. On the electronic side, check which software a DJ controller is built for, rekordbox, Serato or both, before you pay, and on a keyboard whether the keys respond to how hard you press. Two channels are enough to learn to mix; four matter only once you are playing long sets.
Speakers and lights coming out of a discomóvil:
across Costa Rica the discomóvil, a DJ with a rig of speakers and lights hired for the night, plays quinceañera parties, school graduation dances and weddings. Hiring one starts around ₡80,000 and runs past ₡150,000 for a full set-up, so the operators earn their gear back and upgrade often, and their older speakers and moving-head lights come up for sale. That is often decent kit at a fair price, but it has been loaded into a pickup and set up in a different salón every weekend. Ask how many events it has done, look for dented grilles and loose jacks, and listen to each speaker at volume for a rattle or a torn cone before you agree a price.
Bellows, keys and jog wheels on a used instrument:
close the air button on an accordion and pull: the bellows should resist and hold, and if they sag, air is leaking through a corner or a cracked fold. Then play every button in both directions, since a silent or buzzing reed is a workshop job. On a keyboard or digital piano, run up every key softly and then hard, and test the pedal socket. A DJ controller should be plugged into a laptop with its software running: every fader should move without crackle, both jog wheels should track and the USB port should not wobble. Any guitar or amplifier gets played before money changes hands. Ask for the box or the serial number on a recent electronic piece, and be wary of a nearly new controller priced well under what the same model costs in a shop.
A short recording that sells an accordion or a controller:
a buyer wants to hear it before travelling, so record half a minute of it being played, every row of buttons on an accordion, both decks on a controller, and add it to the listing. Say when you bought it and what comes with it, from the gig bag and straps to the power supply and the sustain pedal, and whether a software licence passes to the new owner. Put an accordion’s key and bass count in the title, because that is how players search. Someone coming from Cartago or Ciudad Quesada to see a controller will bring headphones and want to plug in, and someone after an accordion will want to play it for longer than a minute, so leave time for both.