[pianotech] Restoring Museum Pianos

[Susan Kline]

I remember vividly when I came across a long Chickering with a Brown 
action in it, needing tuning and regulation. The owner played on it a 
lot. People had tried to expand letoff to get rid of bobbling hammers 
the ordinary way, and of course that did not work.

I took the action and keys home. I remember how big they were - I had to 
take the top three hammers off to get it into the Tercel hatchback, and 
it still barely left room for me to drive.

At home I puzzled out how it was put together, saw that I'd need to 
bolster out one piece of cloth on a wide rail to get it to work, turned 
it over, and found the rail under the piece of cloth had a slot for 
adjustment. Eureka! Did it, bobbling hammers magically started working 
right.

It was way fun.

What a travesty it would be to take the Brown action out of one of those 
old beasts and replace it with generic modern, especially for a museum! 
They AREN'T THAT HARD TO FIGURE OUT. I did it from a standing start, 
with no aid or preparation. My unasked-for advice: replace only what you 
absolutely need to, and put in something as close to what you are taking 
out as possible.

Susan Kline

On 1/4/2011 7:04 PM, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:
> Unless I misread Ursula's original email it sounds like the casework and finish are original and in reasonably good condition. If that is the case then gentle touchup and polishing would be preferable to refinishing. The action is probably a Brown action--there are no readily available replacement parts (probably a good thing) so the originals are going to have to be rebuilt. Not all that difficult, just different. As is regulating. I can't remember that the damper tray was overly difficult in these pianos, probably straight-forward rebuilding work there. I'd imagine the hammers are toast by now. I don't know the politically correct way to go about replacing these but I do know that Ronsen cold-pressed hammers using Bacon felt comes pretty close to the character of the originals. The pinblock should be plugged and re-drilled rather than replaced. Hard to say what the soundboard might need without seeing it. I'd want to figure out how Chickering crowned the thing. Once that is known--and everything else can be measured--it shouldn't be all that difficult to match the tone characteristic of the original no matter what has to be done with the thing.
>
> In all, depending on the casework, of course, it shouldn't be all that different that the kind of rebuilding that used to be done before it became possible to toss all the inside stuff and replace everything with new stuff. Time consuming but there's not all that much that is really tricky.
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> ddf
>
> Delwin D Fandrich
> Piano Design&  Fabrication
> 620 South Tower Avenue
> Centralia, Washington 98531 USA
> del at fandrichpiano.com
> ddfandrich at gmail.com
> Phone  360.736.7563
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Anne Acker
> Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 4:26 PM
> To: pianotech pianotech
> Subject: [pianotech] Restoring Museum PIanos
>
> Great response, Del!  and thanks for bringing up some up those ideas.  I agree for the most part, I much prefer to have those pianos making music at those museums.  The silent box behind the rope, or hermetically sealed glass, is however, the best route for the truly rare and old, which I doubt this instrument is.  For the truly rare and old, it is more important to preserve evidence of how the instrument was built, and then to build replicas so we can play and hear them.
>
> I believe it would be wonderful to restore this piano.  My concern is that it should retain its character in how it looks, plays and sounds, as much as is possible given currently available restoration materials.   This requires knowledge of how it was originally intended to be, cosmetically, and what it's construction techniques imply, including the longevity of the sound production system given those construction techniques and intents.  That's a long winded way of saying, that certain things may not be broke, so don't fix 'em, or worse replace them with different types of modern parts.
>
> I've seen too many antique pianos that were turned into bizarre hybrids, or into modern pianos in a pretty case.  For a private home, that may be what the owners want.
>
> Museums and historic homes, in my experience, want as truthful of exhibits as possible.  In addition, they may have standards they are required to follow.
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> AA
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