If you are considering a major overhaul of an old European upright or a 19th century square grand, I would like you to keep three things in mind. I like to use the analogy of a three-legged stool. One leg represents the customer's interests. What are their needs for furniture, musical performance, long term needs, sentimental attachment, etc. Leg two represents the piano: it's original design, condition - it's musical potential. Leg three is the technician/rebuilder. Can you do the work? Can you address items one and two satisfactorily and still meet your own financial needs? Are all three legs the same length? The professional technician makes sure they are or walks away from the job. We like to talk about long-legged stools, but sometimes a short-legged stool is OK - so long as it's balanced. Most pre-war spinets deserve no more than routine service: Tuning, regulation, perhaps some hammer filing, maybe replace a set of plastic elbows. To do more than this to a piano worth a couple hundred dollars at best may meet your financial needs, but will rarely improve the performance/life expectancy of the piano. At what point do you stop replacing major components of an old unexceptional car and admit that it's time to junk it? Most old square grands illustrate this approach even better. The New York manufacturers took their square grands to Atlantic City, NJ and set fire to them for good reason. They were inferior musically to the new uprights and deserved to be discontinued dispite consumers' attraction to their appearance. Restoring the modern upright is not quite so cut and dried. Pianos that have lived most of their lives in the mid-atlantic region of the US where I live do not respond well to high humidity and heating systems. European and west coast pianos may survive better because the annual humidity swings may not be as severe. In most cases, old uprights deserve to be junked: in some cases, repaired. But rebuilt by replacing all the major components of the piano? I want to know how long the compents will last that you decided not to replace. Then lets compare the cost, performance and life expectancy of this new and improved piano with that of a new instrument. It seldom adds up. Show me the numbers. Carl D. Root RPT Rockville, MD
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