Hi David I've rebuilt several Non famous pianos both grands and uprights. I prefer it to have at least a hardwood rim or laminated mahogany etc. That said I have bellied to ornate 6 ft Weber's from 1905 ish. Also one Hardman in a Louis case. These had a soft wood rim of some kind. If memory serves it was poplar. The Weber turned out to be a beautiful sweet piano. The original Plate was very beefy and I feel reassured with that heavy sand cast plate would hold the structure together as well as nor vibrate as many vacuum cast plates do. On all three instruments were rib crowned with taller ribs. The original rib scales wouldn't have had crown for three hours ...they were seriously under built. If a client is going to invest in a good solid American piano they will have a sizeable investment but they will also have a quality instrument made when craftsmanship was more prevalent in our country plus they had choice selections of lumber. Yesterday we picked up a beautiful Ludwig upright....for free! I have rebuilt many and these guys were onto substantial cut-offs and Beefy numerous ribs. They always sing with no weak treble spots and will put to shame any Upright made today. When the economy thrives a gain we need to market this idea more fervently. Cheers..Long week Dale CHeck out these beautys. Pics enclosed as attachments -----Original Message----- From: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 4:17 pm Subject: [pianotech] Assessing potential for rebuilding I am finding that more and more individuals are open to rebuilding their non premium named pianos including new soundboards and complete actions etc. I currently have several such projects either in the shop or waiting to come in. The argument is that they already have the piano and when properly redesigned with attention paid to scale, soundboard and action, and with careful execution, these pianos will perform as well as any other piano (thank you Del Fandrich for starting me down this path some years ago now). Assessing the potential in these pianos, it seems, requires mostly an assessment of the plate and rim. While I have my own criteria for making that assessment, I’m interested to know what criteria others involved in this type of endeavor would use to assess the rebuilding potential of an instrument, specifically as it relates to the rim and the plate. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100108/c8ed3f2a/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 8.JPG Type: image/pjpeg Size: 430008 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100108/c8ed3f2a/attachment-0004.bin> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 9.JPG Type: image/pjpeg Size: 411710 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100108/c8ed3f2a/attachment-0005.bin> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: weber_3.JPG Type: image/pjpeg Size: 161240 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100108/c8ed3f2a/attachment-0006.bin> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: weber_4.JPG Type: image/pjpeg Size: 140029 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100108/c8ed3f2a/attachment-0007.bin>
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