I had a job like this a couple of years ago...well kinda. Customer's dad had died recently. He wanted to keep his dad's piano (which his grandfather had won in a poker game years ago). Horrible, horrible no name runt grand. Needed everything, and was horribly built to start with. I offered him a nice grand I had in the shop instead of restoring this thing...but he wanted his dad's piano. I said I could do a very very partial rebuild for 15k, get it up and running, but not anything more than that, as it really needed 35k. Gave him the proposal. He sat on it for 6 months. Every once in a while, he'd email with a question. Finally after 6 months of intermittent emails, he said he was ready to go ahead with it.
Directly after that email, he emailed again, saying point blank..."is this worth it?". I emailed back, utterly candidly, and said no it was absolutely not worth it musically, giving my reasons. I said the only reason It would be worth it was for the pure emotional connection, and to be clear about that from the beginning. So, I said, he needed to decide whether the emotional connection was worth 15k. He thanked me for the candid reply, thought about it another 2 weeks,, finally saying "go ahead"...thanking me for making him focus on why he would make this investment.
It actually came out pretty well, as I experimented with some old board techniques I've been messing with since, and experimented with strategies for reviving something that never had it to begin with. We did put more into it than we contracted for, but I kind of liked the job, where the customer's intention was honestly challenged before he accepted. It was purely an emotional journey for him, and he was quite grateful for the the improvements we worked on it.
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Jim Ialeggio
grandpianosolutions.com
Shirley, MA
978 425-9026
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-29-2020 11:41
From: Chris Solliday
Subject: Repinning with large tuning pins
Original Message:
Sent: 11/28/2020 9:31:00 AM
From: Gregory Cheng
Subject: RE: Repinning with large tuning pins
I am with Jon Page on this one. On one hand you can't catering to ridiculous requests when the piano is beyond its useful life and cannot be serviced especially when restoration is out of the question. Secondly what else did the last piano tech do to also ruin any future work? The simple fact is pianos don't last forever. My guess is the last tech "got the piano by" for a few years and now here you are with a customer who still has a dead piano. But it all honesty they bought 20 years, 20 years ago. It won't be able to fixed forever.
I would also question the efficacy of glues, epoxies and and adhesives in these situations. Replace wood with wood. Make or purchase pinblock plugs.
If you cannot do the work the right way (with a new pinblock panel in your shop) because the piano cannot have the work done or the customer isn't willing to pay/let you, you should walk away. Don't be the last tech, be the only tech.
But again the cost vs benefit doesn't ring true regardless of how long the piano has been in the family. How long until any and all work you do is undone by something else completely? Regardless of what you do or say, in situations like this, it will always be your fault. Either for allowing the customer to do it or for making what ever future problem happen because it was fine before you touched it.
I am not still driving my great-grand fathers Model-T because it has been in the family. The Model-T is a vehicle. Pianos are vehicles for beautiful music. If the piano can no longer singing its a corpse. Stop playing with corpses. I wouldn't my grand children playing with a piano just because it was my piano- I would want them to continue to enjoy playing music on a good piano because music is the gift not the piano. The thousands of dollars in moving and repair an upright could get them a much nicer piano and the music lives on.
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Gregory Cheng, RPT
Original Message:
Sent: 11-27-2020 12:11
From: Laura Wright
Subject: Repinning with large tuning pins
Hello all,
I have a customer with an old upright piano that was restrung about 20 years ago. The stringing job was done very poorly with 2 (or less) coils on the pins, very uneven heights with coils touching the plate on some, etc. It is almost impossible to get any kind of stability in the tuning, with unisons going out very quickly. We have discussed restringing the piano, and I removed a couple pins to get a size and discovered they are fives! I haven't taken a torque reading, but they seem relatively snug in the block.
So my question is, what should I do about pin size? I know that larger pins make tuning more difficult, and I surely don't want to have to use sixes! New pin block panels are out because she doesn't want the piano moved out to my shop. I was thinking maybe I could just turn the existing pins up enough to get new coils on them without loosening them too much. But if I reuse these larger pins will the tuning difficulty still remain?
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!!
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Laura Wright, RPT
Ivory Keys Piano Service
Durango CO
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