Good morning, oh wise pianotech list... I am putting together an appraisal for an 85 note1887 Steinway A. It had been "rebuilt" probably 50 years ago, judging by the fact that the plastic keytops are already starting to craze a little and the finish (a reasonably good economy finish) had faded quite a bit in spots, and the bass strings were a little dull sounding. It had been restrung with the original block, and the tuning pins felt good and snug. Mechanically, it was in surprisingly good shape - it appeared the hammers and shanks had been replaced (probably at the time of the other repairs) and there was some excessive friction and it was certainly due for a full regulation, but the piano was certainly playable and the tuning sounded reasonably good despite being at 435. Sustain times in the capo section was around 6 seconds. The biggest concern I had with the piano was that there was a crack running along the entire rim of the piano between the inner and outer rim. It was as much as .5 mm wide in some places. My question is how big a concern is this, and how much should it effect the appraisal? If I were trying to sell the piano myself, I'd probably just flip the piano over and fill it with epoxy - not a big deal. But I'm curious to others opinions. It doesn't appear to be effecting the tuning stability of the piano. Its a tricky appraisal - I figure as a core piano its worth around 5K. The local dealer is selling "refurbished" instruments like this for 20K or more. I'm figuring this one's value is somewhere in the middle around 10K. Thanks for your ideas! -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101111/9d4bec42/attachment.htm>
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