Kranich Bach ache(pitch raise on a century old piano)

[Piannaman@aol.com]

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List,

I got lucky today, I guess.  No broken strings.

When I arrived at the elementary school where my day's most interesting 
tuning was to take place, I found a really beautiful, monstrously large Kranich and 
Bach upright, circa 1903.  It had beautifully maintained flame mahagony case. 
Expected to be a rehearsal piano for the California Youth Symphony, it rested 
in the multi-purpose room of the school, 15-20 cents flat in the bass, 20-30 
cents in the mid, and 25-45 cents flat in the high treble.  

I was left alone with this beast.  The gentleman who had contracted me was 
elsewhere, and the principal of the school was just happy that a piano had been 
donated to him by parents in what is probably one of the wealthiest 
communities in the country at a time when music is taking a distant back seat .  

I measured the pitch, and groaned.  To pitch raise, or not to pitch raise, 
that was the question.  Common sense would have told me to a)  leave    b) tune 
the piano to a lower pitch.  My contact had said that I should go ahead and do 
repairs as long as they were within reason, so my thought was that broken 
strings in an attempt at pitch raising were certainly acceptable at this point, 
given that the piano was to be used in orchestral rehearsals.

As I Pro-Teked all the string bends, v-bars, pressure bars, I took note of 
all of the features this piano had to offer.  Great fold-down music rack!  
Patented 1883.  The plate lists each and every patent unique to this Kranich and 
Bach.  Some of them were really interesting, many of them seemingly pointless 
overbuild just to be different.  At least there were no brass flanges.

I was actually able to pitch raise it and only had major adrenaline rushes on 
the 3 pins that popped.  The rest of it went well with the help of TuneLab 
Pocket.  I "fine" tuned it, and it came out reasonably well.The false beats in 
the upper end were a bit gnarly, but the piano ended up at A440.  The tone was 
rich and warm in a way that is unique to old uprights. 

Ahhh, the day went remarkably better after that was done.

Dave Stahl


I  

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