On 4/19/07, Dave McKibben quoth: > >What is the general perception of an 1800's era John Broadwood grand >piano with respect to rebuilding and value?? My thoughts, which may not be everyone's (i.e. flame suit on :-0). These pianos do not have a lot of intrinsic value unless they are very early. Most of what you will find are late 19th century and do not vary a lot from piano to piano. I have restored, not rebuilt, a number of these. You will need to plug the pinblock and redrill for the smallest tuning pins you can get, 1/0 or less. See what Jurgen Goering has. Otherwise you can run into problems at the struts. They do not play or sound like modern pianos, and should not be expected to. Except for one at Strathmore Hall in Bethesda, MD all the Broadwoods I have worked on are in private homes where they are expected to stay in tune, if not at pitch, and perform at the occasional party or family gathering. They are more valued for appearance and age then for performance. This does not mean they should be disrespected as instruments. For the time they were quite successful, if different from what we expect from a piano. If you are going to work on one, start with the goal of keeping to its design and you cant go too far wrong. The action is more like an upright than a modern grand and will take some feeling your way through, the dip should be shallow, the aftertouch almost non existent, lost motion as small as possible. Dampers are borderline at best, do not try to redesign them, copy what's there. For my money, and the British technicians with more experience may disagree, the Collards and Kirkmans were better instruments, but the Broadwoods must have been more popular judging by the numbers that survive. I hope this helps a bit. -- ----Dave ----------------------------- Dave Doremus, RPT New Orleans ------------------------------
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