Piano Cleaning?

[Joel Jones]

on 5/9/00 4:09 PM, John Minor at jminor@uiuc.edu wrote:

> How do others keep the grime from building up on the pianos? We have 21
> Steinways M's that are just 2 years old and look awful. What works? I know
> hermetically sealing them might do, but the students just wouldn't go for
> that! : )
> 
> John Minor
> University of Illinois
> 

John,
On the outside we do Murphy's oil soap.   Don't cringe, but in practice
rooms I wax the case with McQuire's car wax. Seems to hold up under the
constant barrage of book bags, and coats that get thrown on top of the lid.
    For the inside we also use Murphy's for the board and clean the strings
with 3M scratchies.  Blow out the action and under the plate .
    I then make a cover for the entire plate area from curtain material and
insulation board sticks.   The sticks keeps the material from sagging onto
the strings.   Once a year we pull out the covers and look at the nice clean
strings, soundboard and pin area.
    It was not without a moderate degree of resistance that the string
covers became part of the piano.  We charge a fee for reinstallling the
covers if they are 'vandalized'.  Many pianists believed that the covers
dampened the sound.  But after blindfold tests where our pianists could not
tell me when the lid was up or down, they went away grumbling and have now
(3 years later) stopped pulling the covers.
    I believe this is the cornerstone of keeping your inventory at a good
level.  A junky piano just gets treated like junk - no matter what it sounds
like or how the action responds.
    End of philosophy PNO
Joel