Broadwood Grand

[Clark]

1880's seems awful late for leather hammers; late squares often have leather
covering the treble hammers, but I haven't seen any grands of this age with the
same. If all the damage incurred from a previous "restoration" is a new set of
hammers and 3 ruined plate threads, count yourself and your client lucky,
especially if the hammers are light enough to work.

If this piano has an antique ribbing design and a single bridge scale , it will
sound different even if restrung, but not bad; I find it disheartening when
technicians write instruments off because they are old, worse when modernization
occurs from a notion that newer is better.

In this case the damage is repairable. New metal can replace the drilled out
parts of the webbing, the difficult part is finding three pins and the
appropriate tap. Since it seems that semblances both of authenticity and of
tuning are of interest to your customer, I would lean toward replacing the block
and restringing with the original pins. They are beautiful pianos.

(...and I just got a customer with a falling apart, urethane refinished, plastic
keytop 1887(!) S&S square for which they paid $10k...)

Clark


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