Mirror Pianos

[John Musselwhite]

In the past year I've seen two Steinway Ks from the end of the last century
that had been cut down into mirror pianos. Both were pretty bad inside as
well as appalling outside.

One of them, which was quite rough outside, went into the local Steinway
dealer where they undid the damage by building up the case sides where it
had been cut down and making new front and bottom panels similar to the
originals (the owners wouldn't spring for the fretwork inside the panels,
though). The original toe-blocks were intact but the legs had been replaced
with straight sticks so their cabinet man made patterns off my old Steinway
E's legs and copied them for replacement. The only thing they did with the
interior was remove the last six inches of the treble bridge cap (after also
removing the 15 screws holding the cap on!) and recap it. It had originally
been "ebonized" according to the stamp inside and was refinished in brushed
black lacquer.

If I recall it cost about 8K (CDN) to do the cabinet. It looks almost like
it came from the factory now and you'd never know it had been butchered at
one point. Plus, even though it's 100 years old and basically worn-out
inside it STILL sounds and plays better than many new pianos in that price
range. The owners will rebuild the interior at some point. With new K-52
Steinways running at $24K CDN the owners are still ahead even if they don't
do the inside. At least the piano looks nice enough to be put into a "good"
home now and it does play and tune again.  Gord Moffatt of Irene Besse
Keyboards should be quite proud of the work he did on it.

The other one will probably remain just a sad old mirror piano forever, and
I DO ask the customer to remove the mirror before I tune it (which is once
in a blue moon anyway).


John Musselwhite, RPT
Calgary, Alberta Canada
musselj@cadvision.com