A Glut of Old Uprights

[Clyde Hollinger]

Tom,

I have a couple thoughts.  How long would it take you to make these
retrofits?  Will the client be willing to pay for them?  I suspect that a
client who is satisfied with an old upright doesn't care much if it is flat
or not, as long as it sounds reasonably good to them.  Also, in this part of
the country, your "if" statement would almost never apply ("if a piano has
gotten light playing ... and the environment was friendly").

I certainly see no harm in your going this direction, but it's not what I
would do.

Regards,
Clyde Hollinger
Lititz, PA

Tom Cole wrote:

> I may have once written to this list about a piano which I had first
> tuned to 100 cents flat and was, on the return visit, suddenly "up to
> pitch". The old upright had broken 3 strings in the first few notes of
> the temperament and thus to get A4 even close to 440Hz would have been a
> futile effort. But the engineer-owner with perfect pitch soon found that
> the instrument was useless to him and his solution was to transpose the
> keyboard up one half step.
>
> This was many years ago and the piano finally sold, a few years back, to
> someone else who called me to tune it. I tuned it again this week and,
> except for not having a C8, it still sounds and plays well for a piano
> its age, having gotten that new lease on life.
>
> As I was tuning, I thought about the plethora of these old uprights
> still in service and how averse their owners are to "recycling" them. If
> a piano has gotten light playing over the years and the environment was
> friendly (like the Pacific coast), the aging wire may be the only thing
> needing replacement and why not do what this inventive gentleman had
> done where restringing is not a feasibility?
>
> The main challenge, because of the different ways the keys are splayed,
> is adapting the capstan of the last key in each section to pick up the
> first wippen of the next section. In the above instance, a piece of
> thick wire was looped around a screw in the capstan hole and bent to the
> right, ending in another loop underneath the next sticker. Lost motion
> is adjusted by bending the wire.
>
> Although undetectable by the pianist, it's not the most elegant solution
> and I've since devised a way to modify the keys in question to assume
> new offset angles. I won't go into the particulars here - it's kind of a
> fun puzzle to solve yourself - but thought that list members might be
> interested in discussing the concept. I know a great many of these old
> untunables should be "pitched" (and a few deserve to be rebuilt) but, as
> long as we have parents who buy these thrift-store "bargains" for their
> children to learn on, I think there are situations where this idea could
> have merit. Comments, please.
>
> Tom
> --
> Thomas A. Cole, RPT
> Santa Cruz, CA
> mailto:tcole@cruzio.com