[CAUT] SD10 "Elephant graveyard"?

[Ron Overs]

Jim,

I believe the SD-10 is a very good design. One of my first rebuilds 
was an SD-10 (a 1975 piano in fact, same year as yours), and it had a 
wonderful tone post rebuild. Unfortunately at the time of the piano's 
first rebuild (1988) my understanding of action geometry was somewhat 
primitive. It continued to be terrible to play until we rebuilt it 
again recently when I fitted an Overs action and a new in-house 
designed keyboard, made by Rick Wheeler. The SD-10 has great 
potential for rebuilding.

Certainly there are major problems with the standard instrument but 
all can be rectified by a competent re-manufacturer. The SD-10 has by 
far the best plate out of the D and SD-10, and it all has to do with 
plate weight. The SD-10 plate is massive, which will allow a properly 
re-built version of the piano to be a simply wonderful instrument, 
provided that an appropriately-decent soundboard with a larger bass 
corner cut-off and a treble cut-off is built for the beast. The major 
problem with the factory SD-10 was workmanship, which was so sloppy 
everywhere that the inherently-good design of the piano wasn't 
capable of being realised. Without quality craftsmanship good design 
is worth nothing.

One of the major difficulties with institutions, and it has been 
happening throughout my entire 34 year career in the business, is 
that they have this un-informed attitude that once a concert piano is 
worn out it can no longer be returned to the performance levels of a 
new piano, so successive instruments get put further down the 
rehearsal room chain until they are finally disposed of as hopeless 
wrecks. Just a re-string and hammers doesn't return a piano with a 
'dead' board to health. But since hammers and strings is all that 
most institutional pianos ever get in the way of 'rebuilding', the 
myth continues as each instrument works its way down the 
rehearsal-room line to certain-death. Furthermore, to the dealer's 
delight, he/she can load the problems with the traded piano onto the 
last rebuilder who worked on it because, as all dealers know, 
soundboards never die as they grow old, they only sound that way.

The truth is that with many of these pianos, provided that the rim 
hasn't de-laminated and that enough mass of quality wood was used for 
the rim and belly, they can be rebuilt with the best of contemporary 
thinking to transform them into a piano which would simply run-rings 
around the factory fodder which comes from writing another goddamn 
check for another goddamn new instrument. But this story never gets 
to be told, because there's no golden-under-the-table handshake for 
the institutional rep who is negotiating the deal, when he/she is 
dealing only with a rebuilder. The gravy-train goes on while no-one 
gives a damn, because all the right nests are being thoroughly 
feathered.

Ron O.

>What do you do with your 9' pianos after they've served their 
>purpose? We have a 1975 SD10 that isn't a bad piano, has a Wapin 
>bridge, OK sound.  But as we bring in new pianos to the concert hall 
>the older ones get pushed down the pecking order into classrooms, 
>etc. Now we don't have any classrooms that will fit a 9' and need to 
>surplus one out.
>
>Options; (?)
>1.       Surplus sale, eBay, etc.
>2.       Find a local school, etc.
>3.       ????????????
>
>Any other options? Is there an "elephant graveyard" out there 
>somewhere? (Remember those old Tarzan movies?)
>
>Thanks.
>
>Jim Busby BYU


-- 
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
    Grand Piano Manufacturers
_______________________

Web http://overspianos.com.au
mailto:ron at overspianos.com.au
_______________________