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 _______________________
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