Hello, I've restored two Pleyel grands, and I have to say that they are remarkably warm and clear pianos! I absolutely love the tone and clarity. The only advice I can offer about the pins is to pull one out before you make a recomendation to the customer about re-pinning. The Pleyel pianos I have rebuilt all had very short tuning pins, and the holes are drilled to accomodate. Standard pins may be 3/4" longer, forcing you to drill out the pinblock. If this is the case, purchase a drill stop collet for your drill bit and do it free-hand as long as the holes are not oblong. If you are careful you can do a very nice job..... if you purchase a long drill bit (maybe 8") you will not have to be concerned with cooling the bit since the heat will dissipate. maybe fit a no.2 pin in and see how it feels before you oversize. good luck, Mark Perry www.carvedpianoparts.com From: amadeuspiano at comcast.net To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:11:14 -0500 Subject: [pianotech] Pleyel Grand Piano Hi all, I just tuned a Pleyel grand piano. About 5’2’’ to 5’5’’ I forgot to measure. The serial number on the plate was 70669 but there was another number on the case, inside, towards the end of the music desk slide rails, 183208. The plate no. makes it ca. 1870-80 from what I can find. It’s been in the family for awhile, but the history is fuzzy. It’s a real beauty. The bass strings were wound in a way I hadn’t seen before, tapering at the ends in a real pretty, conical way. The piano must have been rebuilt at some point (maybe in Europe?)—the hammers and action are in good shape, the pins were 1/0 or 2/0 (or foreign?), the strings were in good condition, and the felt was in good condition as well—however, many of the tuning pins (about half at least) were unacceptably loose. Though it hadn’t been serviced in 3 or so years per the customer (my guess is more like 5 yrs), the biggest problem was the unisons (because of the loose pins). The piano was about 20 cents flat, but the unisons were all over the place. I did a PR and tuned it and found the tone *really* nice. The high treble was esp. tight and crisp (and consequently it was easy to tune the unisons all the way to C8—I've never had such an easy time hearing the vibrations in the high treble—almost no muddiness). All the wire strings were tied off—not a single shared string/ loop. What are your recommendations for the pins? I don’t think the piano is very stable in its current state. With a piano of this quality, I don’t really like the idea of using CA glue, but what do you think? The strings are still ok, so I don’t need to restring, but could I, should I recommend repining with the next size up and reuse the existing strings? The coils are real low too—not much room to tap in if that was an option. I’d also like to get any thoughts on the manufacturer. I'm guessing this family purchased the piano in Europe many years ago, already rebuilt. (The owner didn’t recall the strings ever being replaced or any major work for that matter—but I don’t believe they can be any older than 20 or so years; I can't even believe they're that old—no rust at all, the bass strings in real good shape, the tone phenomenal, and the hammers are nice and clean and unworn—it’s a bit of a mystery). Thanks, Gary H. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091126/5e70b8f7/attachment.htm>
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