Kimball Baby Grand Piano Pin Block for Sale

The Pragmatist

Inexpensive Piano With Strings Attached

• November. 12, 2014

­Fifty-fifty these days, when inexpensive secondhand pianos are in plentiful supply, having been tossed aside to make way for compact, sophisticated keyboards, non many people can brag well-nigh owning a Steinway. Fewer own one that's not worth bragging about. And then in that location's the guy who really went out of his way to purchase one that'due south not worth bragging almost.

Then assemble 'round my 133-yr-former Steinway upright, and hear a little ditty most a human being with a laptop, a rental van and impulse-spending issues.

My tune is not quite a dirge, I suppose, since this piano is actually an improvement on the troll it displaced from my living room. Simply I'd have endured far less angst, and gotten more than piano for my coin, if I had listened to the experts before leaping at my "bargain" discovery.

My advisers included Amy Tiernan, a piano technician and restoration specialist at Doghouse Pianos in Pawcatuck, Conn.; Fred Altenburg of Altenburg Pianos in Elizabeth, N.J.; and Barb Blair, author of "Piece of furniture Makeovers" (Chronicle), and founder of Knack Studio in Greenville, S.C.

Ms. Tiernan'due south advice was typical of what I heard. "Don't blitz into anything," she said. "You don't know what you're getting into until you have someone await at it."

Right. But what are the odds of finding an bachelor pianoforte technician the moment you spot a Craigslist ad for a used Steinway, in "good" condition, for $fifty?

It had been kept in a dry, heated garage for 15 years, said the possessor, who is the chief executive of a well-established telecom business. He said the pianoforte had been inspected past a technician, who deemed its soundboard healthy. "We're clearing out the garage, and I but want it gone," he said. "People take been calling nonstop since I put upwards the advertising."

The photos showed a nearly five-foot-tall upright that had been sanded downwardly, and then all I had to exercise was stain information technology, tune information technology and play.

Mode too good to be true, I idea.

"I'll have it," I said.

Now allow's take a pace back and consider what I should accept done.

When selecting a used pianoforte, my panelists said, it's fine to be fatigued to the better names, like Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Chickering, Baldwin and Knabe, among others. But even among those brands, prospective buyers are likelier than ever to find instruments that aren't worth salvaging.

Mr. Altenburg said that in by generations, pianos were as central to family entertainment as televisions are today, but as that tradition fades further into oblivion, heirloom instruments oftentimes suffer from neglect. Crucial parts can neglect and, to untrained eyes and ears, the piano could appear fine.

"It's actually similar buying a used auto," Mr. Altenburg said. "Unless you lot know these things, y'all wouldn't even know what to look for."

That caveat aside, Mr. Altenburg posted a video on his website, altenburgpiano.com, explaining how nonexperts can inspect a piano's soundboard and the bass and treble bridges.

But even if those expect fine, there could be hidden bug with other parts, like the wooden blocks that secure the tuning pins. The pins concur the strings at the proper tension for extended periods — unless the block is croaky. Pianos that live in areas with extreme humidity swings are more decumbent to great, which is why some experts warn confronting ownership older pianos in the eastern United States, for instance.

(That bit of wisdom comes from the used-piano tutorial video hosted on pianobuyer.com. The website is edited past Larry Fine, an author of "The Pianoforte Book," a much-lauded resource for prospective pianoforte owners.)

So, how practice you check a pin cake'southward health earlier yous buy? With many pianos, yous don't.

A technician can check for patterns — for case, if a cluster of strings is out of tune, it could suggest a bad spot in the pin block. But a cracked pin block is like a leaky caput gasket in a car engine. Sometimes you tin can fix it and it'll hold for years. Sometimes not. And either way, it portends trouble elsewhere. And if the piano has sat unused for years, the but mode to gauge its health for sure is to tune it and see if it holds a tune.

Piano technicians will accuse from $100 to $200 for a tuning, and effectually $100 for an inspection. The best way to observe a adept technician is to triangulate a bit: Seek word-of-oral cavity recommendations from piano teachers and friends, bank check local pianoforte dealerships and, finally, browse listings from the Piano Technicians Club (ptg.org).

Then let's suppose your technician checks your $50 treasure before you buy it, and deems information technology worth taking a adventure on. If yous add the cost of two technician visits, yous've already invested at least $250 in your piano.

Now for the fun part.

When I moved our erstwhile upright piano into our living room, I however had friends who would risk their spines for beer. Now they chance their spines only for CrossFit, so I chosen piano movers. 1 said the charge was $190 an 60 minutes, with a 3-hour minimum. Another estimated $500.

I was having none of that, and the owner of my Steinway said his employees would assistance me become it on the truck, so I rented a 14-foot U-Haul and made the 60-mile trek to his home. Estimated price for that trip, with mileage charges: $250.

Mr. Altenburg offered some tips, since moving a piano safely — for the movers and the instrument — requires specific techniques that meatheads like me too often overlook. The legs of a piano, for instance, tin can easily interruption if movers hold them while lifting. (If there are no front end handles, he said, lift below the keyboard where it meets the case, while holding the handles in the piano's rear.) And instead of straining an old piano's wheels, utilize a piece of furniture dolly.

Bear in mind that the bottom of some pianos are curved, he said, and will require stabilizing if placed on a dolly.

When I showed upward with the van, I beheld my new babe. The veneer on the side panels was peeled off at the lesser, just the sanded wood looked charmingly rustic to my eye. I played a few chords. One key was expressionless. Ane string was snapped. Information technology sounded slightly drunk.

We had three guys with around 150 years in non-piano-moving experience and ane 615-pound piano. Nosotros got it on the dolly easily plenty, then failed to motion information technology halfway up the 10-foot-long ramp until a neighbor showed up and helped.

Getting information technology off the truck required two neighbors and a friend, only we weren't about to try getting it up the stairs to the house, and then I called the movers again. They stopped past on their mode from Boston to western Connecticut with a ix-foot Steinway thou. 20 minutes and some other $250 afterwards, my piano was dwelling house — $500 spent on moving and much more sweat and drama and wasted fourth dimension than if I had hired someone. Brilliant me.

Ms. Tiernan, who has several quondam Steinway uprights in various states of recuperation, paid a visit. She loved the piano the way an archaeologist might adore a mummy. Or a long-term grant.

She coaxed a few strings into tune and offered an optimistic prognosis. For $600 to $1,000, she would revamp the piano'southward activeness, or the myriad parts that strike the strings. A full restoration of the activeness would toll roughly $20,000, she said, not counting the exterior refinishing. A Steinway rep told me a customer on 5th Avenue paid $900 for the piano in 1881 (according to this Minneapolis Federal Reserve Banking company site, that would be about $22,000 today, just a few thousand less than a new Steinway upright in ebony). On superlative of that, it's an 85-key piano, three brusque of the standard, so it'south not worth paying for a full restoration if I ever hope to earn the money back by selling it.

But Ms. Teirnan said that for $1,000, and with regular maintenance, the piano would play nicely for my nonconcert purposes, perhaps for another 20 years or more than.

Sounds fine to me.

What of the refinishing job?

The piano had been "ebonized," or varnished black, to conform to Victorian tastes, and so I was told the veneer was never meant to see the calorie-free of mean solar day. I could replace the veneer on the side panels with sheets of matching veneer and contact cement, but Ms. Blair and several refinishing specialists said it'due south a high-risk functioning for a beginner.

Another option is to remove all the veneer from the piece to expose the maple base, and stain that. "With good woods, there's always an option," Ms. Blair said. "Only don't rush."

I'll more likely stain the veneer and observe a fashion to hide the damaged veneer — behind canvass-music holders, for instance. Either mode, Ms. Blair said, information technology'due south a projection for warmer months when I can strip and sand any remaining spots of varnish and apply stain and polyurethane with windows wide open.

For at present, the Steinway sits with its front panel open, exposing its very absurd Rube Goldberg-esque action. Once it'due south acclimated to its new surround, we'll give information technology a proper tuning, and Ms. Tiernan's revamping is on our schedule.

In the meantime I'll occasionally hit the keys and listen in. The treble notes are more noticeably out of tune, but the bass notes are worth hearing out to the very end.

I'm happy knowing the experience wasn't a complete failure, and we're thrilled to take our one-time animate being out in the garage.

Speaking of which, I posted it on Craigslist last calendar week. I can't sympathise why no one has responded still. It's free!

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/garden/thinking-of-refinishing-your-own-piano-dont.html