Chickering Upright

This venerable Chickering upright was built in Boston around 1895, a year before George Chickering died.  George had dragged his heels on making the effort to modernize his production, but this upright seems on a par with its contemporaries.  This is a classic cabinet grand, big, handsome, and still going strong.

Cool Console #4 - Wurlitzer #2

Either you will think this is very cool, or you won't.  You can't knock Wurlitzer for not trying different styles!  This spinet was built in 1939 in DeKalb, Illinois, a mere four years after the console revolution, and it shows just how quickly some manufacturers caught on to that spirit of revolution.

The parts of the case where wood can be seen are made of cherry, stained brown rather than the usual red.  The rest of the case is covered in cream-colored vinyl, lightly stippled, which has darkened over time.  The keybed emerges like an appendage from the dominant vertical box, making the legs almost unnecessary.  The angled front, which serves as a music desk, is actually part of the lid, which is not hinged - after unscrewing, one simply lifts it off.  My favorite parts are the roll-top fallboard, the faux lyre, and the decorative brass-plated ferrules at the top of the legs.

Compare this Wurlitzer to the one I wrote about earlier.

Related website:
A short history of the Wurlitzer Company.

1878 Chickering Grand

This Chickering concert grand (8' 8") from 1878 belongs to a church that was built in 1852.  I first saw the piano on its side, stored in a dark alcove with other forgotten items.  It had once been the main piano in the sanctuary, but it was considered too old to maintain.  At some point, the small space it occupied was needed, and the church was prepared to "get rid" of the piano.  A member of the congregation campaigned single-handedly to save the piano, and even bring it back to life.  That turned out to be my job, and it was a delight.  The piano was actually in very good condition, and did not require rebuilding, just repair and reconditioning.  It was moved to its current room on the ground floor, and is now getting regular use.

The main feature of this piano is that it is straight-strung.  That is, the bass strings do not cross over the treble strings, but run parallel to them instead.  The bass strings are iron-wound, and sit on their own bridge.  The hammers are also original, as are the ivories and ebonies on the 88 keys.  The case veneer is rosewood, pieced together in four sections.  The piano's tone is lovely, but clearly not modern.  It has little power, but plenty of sustain, except in the upper treble, which is typical for pianos of this age.  I suspect it had much more power back when the soundboard was newer.  It's very rewarding to play.

A 440

This poem is from Jane Shore's most recent book, A Yes-or-No Answer: Poems, published in 2008 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

A squatter in my parents' house,
their Baldwin Acrosonic spinet
didn't leave home until my father died,
and having nowhere else to go,
was shipped here to my living room.

After ten years' sitting, it's out of tune,
the A mute, the damper pedal broken,
the B above middle C sunken in,
the battered walnut veneer embossed
like a notary's raised stamp.

The piano tuner unpacks the tools
stored in his rolling suitcase.
Sweeping generations of photos
from the dusty lid – Russian relatives,
my daughter's school portraits –

he stacks sheet music on the coffee table,
pulls out a silvery tuning fork
from his left breast pocket, bangs it
against his balding skull, holds it
to his good right ear, and listens hard,

refreshing his ear to the sound of A
above middle C, the piano's axis mundi.
I should leave, but mesmerized,
I watch his hairy arm and left hand
disappear inside the piano's innards,

cranking the tuning hammer this way
and that, moving the rubber mutes
along the strings, a little sharp,
a little flat, up and down the scale
while his right hand strikes the keys.

Two hours later, when he's gone,
on the piano bench lies a bill
twice higher than his estimate;
the lid wiped clean, the photos
approximate to where they were,

and also, fished out of the piano,
there's a three of clubs from a deck
I threw out years ago,
five pennies turned pewter gray,
a condolence card, the envelope

sealed with crackled yellow glue.
Its sender, now, has passed on, too.
It's been decades since I practiced
Für Elise or banged out torch songs
from 1000 Standard Tunes,

fakebook my father finagled from
his old musician buddies,
the boys he used to play with
in the big bands.
When I lost my father, I lost music.

When my daughter took lessons,
I'd sit beside her on the bench
just as my father once sat with me,
encouraging, correcting, wincing,
but I wouldn't play a single note.

The church bells across the street
begin to toll the quarter hour –
dividing my day, every day,
into bite-size intervals,
from seven in the morning

until seven at night, another
axis mundi.  I find the key
and, instrument in tune, peck out
the melody to the first
Duet for Church Bells and Piano, opus 1.

- Jane Shore

Related website:
The Music Lovers Poetry Anthology

Cool Console #3 - Wurlitzer

This is one of my all-time favorite spinet designs.  The Wurlitzer company, originally based in Cincinnati, Ohio, made a zillion different console models, many of them quite imaginative.  Wurlitzer was one of the handful of companies that immediately embraced the new console design concept when it was introduced in the United States in 1935.  This piano was built in DeKalb, Illinois, in about 1943, just as Wurlitzer stopped production during World War II.

As with the Krakauer spinet I wrote about earlier, this design emphasizes the square grand shape, but in a more stylized way.  The vertical box holding the plate and strings is given some shape rather than being hidden, and the fake lyre is just a decorative gesture.  The fallboard is a Wurlitzer classic - it slides out flat over the keys, with the knobs facing up, and then the hinged front swings down to complete the closure.

The veneer is basic mahogany, and I love that light horizontal band of veneer above the keyboard.  It is also mahogany, the veneer quarter-cut to emphasize the vertical grain, and lightly stained to contrast with the case.  All the furniture details are delightful - the band of beading around the keybed, the filigree on the music desk, and, oh, those legs!

Related website:
A short history of the Wurlitzer Company.

Never Did That Before!

One thing I love about my appointment book is that I don't have to remember what I'm doing next.  I just look in the book to see what's next.  My wife is always asking me, "So where are you going tomorrow?"  I always cheerfully reply, "I have no idea, it's written in the book."

One morning, after consulting my book, I prepared myself for the day and headed off.  I was going to be tuning first at the home of a loyal and regular customer with a somewhat common name - let's just call him Smith.  I arrived at Smith's house and rang the bell.  A man answered the door, and I recognized him as a neighbor I had once met.  I explained that I was there to tune the piano, and he explained that he was babysitting until Mr Smith came home.  Smith hadn't said anything about my arrival, but the sitter let me in, and I started work.

About halfway throught the tuning, Mr Smith came home.  He was happy to see me, but confused.  "Not that it's a problem, but I thought you were coming tomorrow," he said.  I assured him that the appointment was for today - it was in my book, after all.  I checked the book just to be sure, and to my horror I saw that my customer was right.  So where was I supposed to be? At the home of a different Smith!

I also write the town next to the customer's name in my book, and I had failed to register the difference between today's Smith and tomorrow's.  I had seen the name, I knew where he lived, and had driven there.  Mr Smith was quite gracious - if I had to leave and come back tomorrow, that would be fine.  I called Mrs Smith, who had been waiting patiently for me in the other town, and apologized.  I explained what had happened, and she thought it was pretty funny.  Not to worry, it was OK with her that I come tomorrow, she said.  I thanked her, hung up, and finished Mr Smith's piano.  Writing information down is one thing, remembering to read it carefully is another!

Grotrian-Steinweg

I don't get to see very many of these - a Grotrian-Steinweg upright, built in Braunschweig, Germany, in 1927.  This upright came here not too long ago from England.  It is in very good condition, beautiful ivories on the keys, a nice mahogany veneer with a quite dark red stain - it is almost black, like a really dark rosewood.  It has 85 notes.

The tone of this upright is distinct.  It has a nasal quality, but little of the higher frequencies associated with American pianos.  The soundboard has flattened, so there is little power, and the tone tends toward dark and lush. 

If the name after Grotrian seems familiar, that's no coincidence.  Heinrich Steinweg, a German piano maker, came to New York and established a company under his Americanized name, Henry Steinway.  With him were three sons, hence Steinway and Sons.  But another son named Theodore stayed in Germany and continued making pianos there under the original name Steinweg (pronounced "SHTINE-vaygh"), in partnership with Friedrich Grotrian.

Two of Henry's sons died in 1865, so Theodore came to New York to help his father.  Theodore was an amazing piano designer, and he ended up being responsible for many of the Steinway patents that helped the company become what it is today.  Theodore sold his company in Germany to three of his employees, including Wilhelm Grotrian, son of the late Friedrich.  They were allowed to continue using Theodore's name for ten years.  After that, the company started using the brand name Grotrian-Steinweg, and that's when the trouble started.  The lawsuits began in Germany, and ended up in the United States, and were fought off and on for a century.

It was eventually decided by the US courts in 1975 that Grotrian's use of the Steinweg name was a trademark violation, so now Grotrian makes pianos for export to the United States under the single name Grotrian.  They are quite lovely pianos, and are still being made in Braunschweig (which is sometimes rendered in English as Brunswick).

For more on the century of litigation, see Grotrian vs.  Steinway.
By the way, Grotrian has a cute musical game on their website called the Pianolina.

Bachmann, Berlin

This beautiful Bachmann upright was built in Berlin, Germany.  I can't seem to find any reference to this company anywhere, so I can't say for sure when it was built, even though I know the serial number.  It was probably built in the very early 20th century.

I looked all over the piano for a date.  Sometimes whoever worked on the keyboard will sign their names with a date on the first few keys.  I've even seen the signature of a manufacturer and a date proudly written on the inside of the case.  A hammerhead might carry a date, or the plate might have a date cast into it.  If the piano has been worked on by someone who knows when it was built, he might pencil the date on the plate, or on the keyframe behind the keyslip, or stamp it into some wooden case part.  In addition to serial numbers, there are also case numbers, used as reference in the factory before the serial number has been assigned.  If the action was made by a separate action maker, it could have its own serial number, or a date stamp.  Rebuilders sometimes switch parts from different pianos, creating great uncertainty about when a piano was actually built.  On this piano I found various numbers, but no date, alas.

Bachmann's name is carved into the veneer of the fallboard, something I'd never seen done before.  Usually the maker's name is attached as a decal, or sometimes inlaid.  Another name is carved into the keystop rail, beneath Bachmann's name; Rosen's, apparently a piano dealer in Cape Town, South Africa.

It is a typical German upright with a bird-cage action (like the Berlin-made Waldmann I posted about earlier, also from South Africa), and an over-strung bass section.  The keytops were probably originally ivory, but they have been replaced with ivorine.  The gorgeous veneer is book-matched walnut, with burled walnut panels.  There used to be candelabra attached to the two side panels in front.  The turned balls and collars on the legs are a nice touch.

Bird-cage action!

August Pitch Report

The middle-of-August heat wave finally convinced us swamp Yankees to turn on our air conditioners.  For our pianos, it was too little too late.  The heat wave was humid, but not as bad as in June and July.*  The difference was that June and July were cool, so no one turned on the AC.  Now the pitch on most pianos, even those with humidity control, is quite high, but not evenly so across the keyboard.  Most pianos right now are almost comically out of tune.  If you can wait, they'll actually sound better later in the season (if it's not too wet an autumn).  If you can't wait, and you certainly cannot if you're gearing up for the return to school, your tuner will have a lot of work ahead of him or her.

Expect the pitch to be 15 cents or more high right in the temperament octave.  I'd recommend dropping the pitch to about 6 cents high (A441.5).  If you have to go to A440, plan on a pitch-lowering before tuning.  The pitch might not be quite so high below the temperament octave.  The top of the bass section will be about 5 cents high, rising to maybe 10 cents high around C2, then dropping back down, possibly to zero, at C1.

On the treble end, the pitch will actually drop as you approach the tenor/treble break.  C5 will be about 5 cents or so high.  But don't be fooled, right after the break, you'll be back at 15 cents high.  Then the pitch will quickly drop to about 10 cents high or less around C6, where it might stay, or might drop slowly to zero by C8.

You'll have to keep alert about octave 4 and the part of octave 5 above the break - the pitch is going to want to drift up as you're working.  Keep your wits about you if you want to be done in a reasonable amount of time.  Every piano I've tuned recently has been a struggle.  Good luck.

*A quick example:  today is a comfortable 70 degrees F with about a 60 degree dewpoint, cloudy with rain approaching.  This translates into a relative humidity of 70 percent, which is quite high in spite of how comfortable it feels.  If the temperature hit 90, even with a higher dewpoint of 70 (which would feel pretty muggy), that would only be a relative humidity of 50 percent.

Click here for an explanation of humidity (from my website).
Click here for weather calculators at the National Weather Service website.

Cool Console #2 - Kawai

I love this little Kawai console, with its vertical plain-stripe walnut veneer.  The furniture style, called "continental," features no front legs, flat sides, a large, broad bottom board, and a plain front board that angles back to a narrow top.  The lid is hinged in back.  It would be more traditional to have only two pedals, but the American market demands three.  It was built by Kawai in Japan in 1983.  This console model was a very successful model for Kawai, and it is a lovely little instrument.

I had never seen one of these with this kind of veneer before.  Usually vertical stripe veneer is used as an accent on small horizontal elements, not across the entire piano.  It is not everyone's cup of tea, but I think it works adorably with the style.  The stripes come from how the wood is cut to make the veneer.  The cut is called a quarter cut (or the wood is said to be quarter-sawn), which means that the cut is 90 degrees to the grain, along or parallel to the tree's radius.  You can see that it takes five pieces to cover the width of the piano.

Free-Ranging Pianos

There is a lovely, romantic fantasy everyone seems to have about playing the piano outdoors.  The power of this fantasy may lie in the near impossibility of achieving it, given the half-ton-or-so weight of a piano.  Or perhaps the Romantic-era piano music we are all so familiar with inspires visions of mountains, forests, and seas.  Countless CD covers and posters have featured grand pianos on the beach, in the woods, on mountaintops.  Good luck bringing this fantasy to life, though - nature is not kind to pianos.

One common approach is to have a room especially dedicated as a piano room, with big picture windows facing out onto your favorite natural vista.  If this is your dream, I have a couple of suggestions.  It is pretty important to have both the room's temperature and humidity controlled so the piano is not destroyed.  You will want to play in your shirtsleeves in the middle of a moonlit snowfall, for instance, or play to the setting sun with a cool sea-breeze blowing through.  You will be ecstatic, but your piano will be unhappy.  Direct sunlight is particularly bad.  If you can't bear to have curtains and shades blocking the sun, then you need to treat the windows to lower the amount of radiation coming in and baking your piano.  Your soundboard will crack within a few years no matter what you do, and the piano will never stay in tune.  It may be worth it to you, though.

Another approach is to have a small, nearly portable piano that you can carry around with you.  I knew of a guy who had one of those 69-note minipianos that he kept in a van.  If he were camping at a music festival, he could wheel the piano down a ramp and join in on a jam session out in the woods or on the beach.  Portable electronic keyboards present a similar, though much less romantic, possibility; you can get a small solid-state generator to provide the electricity (or bring a really long extension cord).

I have seen old upright pianos living on porches, somewhat protected from the elements, slowly rotting and falling apart, but available for outdoor playing until it's no longer possible.

Here is one of my favorite news stories, from CNN in November of 2008.  Someone apparently left a piano in the woods of Cape Cod, in the middle of conservation land in Harwich MA, just before Thanksgiving.  It had not been there long, so it had suffered no ill effects, but no one knows where it came from or how it got there.  The police were called, and they rescued it, you might say, but no one claimed it.  I hope somebody besides the squirrels got to enjoy playing it under the trees.

Here's another approach:  this pianist, named Yosuke Yamashita, has performed a couple of times on a grand piano outdoors, but with a twist.  The piano is set on fire first before he plays it, and then he plays for as long as he can.  Here's one video.  I don't know if he lets the tide take the carcass out to sea, like a dead whale, but that would seem appropriate.

Now to the actual point of this post, which is the work of an English artist named Luke Jerram.  Among his installations is a project he calls Play Me, I'm Yours.  For a limited time, he places pianos in public outdoor spaces in a city, and passersby are encouraged to tickle those ivories.  The pianos are later donated to organizations in the city.  He has done this in Sydney, Australia, São Paolo, Brazil, and most recently, London, England, where thirty uprights, decorated by artists, were placed.

I love the idea of the outdoor urban piano.  It is much more social than the idyllic, solitary reverie with nature most people imagine with outdoor pianos.  Jerram outfitted each piano in London with a book of music, the pages laminated, so people could gather around the piano and sing along.  Quite often crowds would gather when the pianos were played.  Two or three people might share a piano.  Other musicians would appear with their instruments.  Jerram noted that he was surprised by how many people knew how to play at least a little bit, and felt free to do so in public.

Jerram doesn't say much about how the project is put together.  Judging from the photos, some of the pianos look pretty old - they're apparently donations and cast-offs.  The website for the London show credits a piano-moving company, but I wondered if the pianos get repaired and tuned.  Then I read a NYT article, which said a "piano tuner who travels around on a bicycle, providing on-the-spot help, has had to bring in reinforcements to deal with all the wear and tear."  Aw, brings a tear to my eye!  You can see that the pianos and benches are secured and locked in place.  One picture shows a plastic sheet pushed aside, so I guess they get protected this way from the rain.  I also read about pianos in parks getting locked up at closing time, so maybe there's a group of volunteers who tend to the pianos each day.  Here is the New York Times article about the London event.  Here are a few more photos from the artist.

Wm Knabe & Co

This lovely grand was built in Baltimore, Maryland, in about 1890.  Knabe (pronounced "k-NAH-bay") was one of America's premier makers, and after the Civil War was considered on a par with Steinway, Chickering, Mason & Hamlin, and Weber.  This piano was made when the company was still run by a Knabe; Ernest, the son of the founder William.

Knabe figured prominently in the formation of the American Piano Company in 1908.  George Foster, a business school grad, had started out as a reed organ salesman, and by 1894, the year Ernest Knabe died, had formed a partnership with William Armstrong to manufacture pianos in Rochester NY.  Their first major acquisition was the Marshall & Wendell Co of Albany in 1898.  Finally, a decade later, after acquiring a number of other companies, they incorporated as American Piano Co.  Knabe was one of the cornerstones of the company; Chickering & Sons, bought in the same year, was the other.

But long before those events, this 7½ foot walnut-veneered grand rolled out of the factory in Baltimore, as would many more until about 1930, when Knabe was moved to the American Piano Company's factory campus in East Rochester.  Pianos with the Knabe name continued to be made in East Rochester for another 50 years.  After a hiatus of passing through various owners, a Knabe line was developed and manufactured in Korea in the late 90's, and finally bought by the Korean maker Samick in 2001.  Samick continues to manufacture pianos with the Knabe name.

A few details about the instrument:  it has 88 notes, two bridges, a pieced (rather than molded) case, and a sloped pinblock not covered by the plate.  The action has wooden brackets, and uses a wooden rocker mechanism rather than the modern threaded brass capstan to regulate the connection between the keys and the wippens.  It has a surprisingly modern tone for a 120-year-old piano.

Cool Consoles - Introduction

Every piano manufacturer has been proud of its big pianos - the cabinet grands, the parlor and concert grands, even the square grands back in the day.  But the piano-makers' bread and butter since the 1920's has been the small pianos - the baby grands, and especially the consoles and spinets.  It was in the 20's, as smaller homes and apartments were being built, that the American consumer, especially the American housewife, began to turn away from the big pianos, particularly the tall, boxy upright player pianos that had been so popular.  The newfangled radio, for example, was smaller, and prettier besides.

In response, manufacturers tried to make their uprights less imposing by scaling down and simplifying the design.  But it was still a big brown ugly box.  Even when they started making smaller uprights, about 48" tall, they were nothing more than miniaturized versions of the big uprights.  Fortunately, as upright sales plummeted in the 30's, the baby grands had become very popular, and kept the industry from collapsing altogether during the Depression.

In 1934, the Swedish piano company Lundholm designed a small upright piano that was completely different from the regular uprights.  It was very short, the cabinetry was attractive and not boxy, and the action was redesigned to fit the smaller space.  The Associated Piano Co of London immediately bought the rights to the design and began manufacturing them as Minipianos.  In 1935, the Minipiano was licensed to Hardman, Peck & Co in the United States.  At the same time, both Haddorff and Winter & Co introduced their console pianos, and within months the industry had completely changed.  Baldwin and Wurlitzer introduced their console designs, and every manufacturer joined the race to create as many different furniture styles as possible with the new design.  These minipianos were an instant hit with consumers in spite of their failings as instruments.

The small pianos came to be called spinets.  Historically, spinet was the name for a particular kind of small harpsichord (possibly, but not definitely, after Spinetti, the name of an Italian maker).  It now means a small upright with a drop, or indirect-blow, action.  What this means is that the action is below the level of the keys, and the keys pull up on the wippens to move the hammers.  This is different than a direct-blow action, which sits above the keys, and the keys push the wippens up.

The name console was coined by the French maker Henri Pape in the 1820's to describe his design of a small upright.  This was at a time when uprights were seven or eight feet tall.  So any small upright is a console upright, and spinets can be said to be a kind of console upright.  After the introduction of the spinet in 1935, manufacturers also began making small direct-blow actions in decorative consoles slightly taller than the spinets.  The larger of these console uprights came to be called studio uprights, and the smaller, which employ a compressed version of the action, are now simply called consoles, in a way meant to distinguish them from spinets and studios.  For this series of postings, however, I will use the word console to mean any small console upright, including spinets.

The furniture styles of consoles range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from elaborate reproductions of historic styles to space-age modernism.  I really love them, the more outlandish the better.  As instruments, however, they leave much to be desired.  Studios eventually became serious instruments, but the consoles are really too small to have high-quality sound, especially in the bass.  The bridge design and placement sometimes results in poor tuning stability and sound quality.  The compressed direct-blow actions are not very responsive, and the drop actions require short keys whose leverage is all wrong.  When manufacturers began cutting corners to cut costs, especially in the late 60's and 70's, the consoles with their inherent design compromises and flaws suffered tremendously.  Still, at their best, some of these consoles wound up sounding pretty good, and playing quite adequately.

Wurlitzer, under the Baldwin name, was the last US manufacturer to make spinets, in the mid 1990's.  Consoles, however, are still quite popular, and are actually better made now than they were 20 years ago.  Sadly, the furniture styles have boiled down to a handful of not very inspiring quasi-historical designs.  When I do encounter a cool console, though, I will document it in a posting here.

Cool Console #1 - Krakauer

This lovely spinet is a Krakauer made in 1946.  Krakauer Brothers of New York City was one of the few mid-sized piano companies to avoid being swallowed up by one of the large piano conglomerates in the 1920's and 30's.  It wasn't until 1980 that Kimball took control of the name.

This piano was designed to look less like an upright and more like a small square grand, a common design approach for the time.  The ribbed bowed sides are meant to disrupt the necessary vertical box holding the plate and strings, and draw attention to the flat horizontal box holding the keyboard and action.  The veneer is a lovely walnut, with vertically oriented grain on the keyslip, the stretcher above the fallboard, and the pedal stretcher.  The bottom board has a fake lyre above the pedals.  The medallion above the fallboard has the name Krakauer stamped into ivory-colored celluloid.  The inlaid daggers above the legs are an especially nice touch.

Piano Lessons

I am learning to play
"It Might As Well Be Spring"
but my left hand would rather be jingling
the change in the darkness of my pocket
or taking a nap on an armrest.
I have to drag him into the music
like a difficult and neglected child.
This is the revenge of the one who never gets
to hold the pen or wave good-bye,
and now, who never gets to play the melody.

- Billy Collins, from the poem Piano Lessons

Related website:
The Music Lovers Poetry Anthology

The Plastic Piano #1 - PVC

I went to my customer's house prepared to tune her piano.  She had warned me that some notes weren't working, usually not a big deal.  As soon as I opened the piano and looked inside, I could see the problem.  There were shards of a yellowish white plastic all over the place.  Oh no, plastic action parts!

To be fair, there's nothing wrong with plastic action parts if they're made correctly - the same can be said of wooden parts.  This piano, a beautiful console made in 1957, had action parts made of PVC, and I'm sure the parts worked well for a time.  Now the plastic had begun to disintegrate, and the parts would have to be replaced.

PVC, polyvinyl chloride, is usually referred to simply as vinyl.  It is one of the most widely used plastics.  It can be molded into things like pipes, it can be made into shiny cloth, and it can be bonded to fabric for use in upholstery, mimicking leather.  The properties of vinyl chloride had been investigated as early as the late 19th century, but it wasn't until the 1930's that a commercially viable plastic was developed.  PVC is quite rigid and brittle, and requires the addition of various plasticizers and stabilizers.  Vinyl combined with cellulose acetate (another plastic) as a plasticizer is what replaced lacquer for making phonograph records, starting in the 40's.  Vinyl without plasticizers is what is molded into rigid shapes, like pipes for plumbing, and siding and flooring for houses.

Rigid PVC should have been perfect for replacing wooden parts in a piano action.  The plastic parts were molded in the same shape as the wooden ones, and installed the same way.  The most common plastic parts were flanges, which are the hinged ends of many action parts and are attached with screws to various rails.  In some actions, backchecks, jacks, and damper levers were also made of PVC.  The only parts that were not made of plastic were the parts that are glued to each other.  PVC parts can be bonded together (using the solvent methylethylketone, or MEK, often called PVC glue), but I guess this was not viable for the action manufacturers.  I did see a Lindner piano, made in Ireland, probably in the 60's, whose action was entirely of plastic.  Even the keys were plastic, made of sheets of PVC glued into long hollow rectangles.

The problem with PVC, as with many other plastics, is outgassing.  The various additives that give vinyl its different characteristics slowly evaporate out of the plastic.  Over time, some plastic becomes more brittle, or shrinks, or becomes discolored, or, in the case of PVC, spontaneously disintegrates.  The technology behind the additives is almost more important than the technology behind the plastic resin itself.  When PVC was used for piano actions, the technology for stabilizing rigid PVC must have been in its infancy.  It was not foreseen that the outgassing would proceed so quickly, that the actions would start to fall apart in a couple of decades.  Modern PVC could be used with no problem, but now the piano industry won't go anywhere near it, and modern plastic action parts are made of other plastics.

The solution is simple, but costly.  The parts must be replaced.  PVC spinet elbows are replaced with acrylic ones, but other parts are replaced with wooden ones.  The parts are readily available because of the demand.  Sometimes not all of the PVC is falling apart, so apparently the outgassing varies from batch to batch.  For instance, in the case of the console I'm working on, the jacks and backchecks are completely shot, they crumble at a touch, but the hammer flanges and damper levers are fine.  They're not the least bit brittle.  I won't replace them for now, but I have warned the owner about the possible need for replacement in the future.

There has been one other use of vinyl in pianos.  Some of the more crazy and delightful console and spinet case designs from the 40's and 50's used vinyl upholstery fabric in addition to the more traditional wooden veneer.  It's found on the sides and top, and Wurlitzer was the main culprit.  The vinyl is usually embossed with the classic leather grain, and my favorite example used a white-with-brown-spots cowhide pattern.

Vinyl imitation leather has also been used to replace the leather on the ends of bridle straps, the straps that connect upright hammers to the wippens.  Over time, the leather disintegrates (not to mention the strap itself), but the vinyl holds up for much longer.  The only disadvantage is that it stiffens up over time and can rattle against the bridle wire.  It also becomes harder to remove from the wire.  I'll have more to say about the use of artificial leather and suede in pianos in a later post.

Related website:
The Plastics Historical Society

The Plastic Piano - Introduction

The piano manufacturing industry is quite progressive, eager to embrace any new material or manufacturing process.  The goal is usually to save money, to keep the price of a new piano down, but sometimes an innovation can add value to a piano, improve it in some way that can be reflected in a higher price or a more competitive product.

Plastic has always been one of those new materials, ever since the industry started using celluloid in the 1870's.  The chemistry behind various plastics was not well understood then, and innovation relied on experimentation, sometimes with terrible results.  There were three prominent plastics disasters in piano manufacturing history.  The first was with PVC, used in the 1940's and 50's to make action parts.  Molded PVC parts were successful at first, but as the plastic aged, it tended to spontaneously disintegrate.  This effect would take several decades to manifest, so that left a lot of time to build plenty of pianos with PVC action parts, all falling apart now.

The second was with Steinway's Teflon action center bushings.  These were tiny inserts made of Teflon, hundreds per piano, that Steinway used in the 70's.  They worked well at first, but after a few years they became quite noisy and needed replacing.  Steinway tried again with a different size insert, and they did work better, but Steinway eventually abandoned the effort and went back to felt bushings.

The third was less disastrous, but still annoying, and it involved Yamaha's Ivorite, a plastic for keytops developed in the 80's.  This plastic is porous, and thus does not feel as slick and slippery as other plastic keytops.  It soon became evident that it was a bit too porous.  As the plastic soaked up finger oils, it stained in a way that looked, frankly, disgusting.  Yamaha reformulated the plastic, and offered to replace all the unsightly keyboards.  Now the Ivorite works fine.

These negative experiences with plastic has made the industry wary of introducing more plastic into pianos.  Pianos are sold, after all, on their 19th century charm, and nothing screams "modern" (not to mention "cheap") like plastic.  The word itself is avoided like the plague, and replaced with phrases like "thermoset composite material," or trademarks like "Ivorite."  Often plastic is introduced in small ways, in parts of the piano not visible, or crucial to its function as an instrument.  When plastic is obviously employed in a significant way, a whole public-relations blitz is rolled out to carefully explain how the new plastic parts are a huge improvement over the old parts, whether or not that is true.  When Kawai used its first plastic action part in the 90's, a plastic jack, I was asked by the local dealer to sign a statement in support that would be used for advertising.  I was more than happy to help until I read the statement.  It was asking me to agree that the new plastic part was superior to the old wooden part, which was ridiculous, and not true in this case.  I refused, much to the dealer's anger.

Nothing has changed the piano in the 20th century as much as plastic has, and I am going to post a number of articles about the plastics used in pianos, all under this heading of The Plastic Piano.  I'll keep the series as a permanent link in the sidebar.  Glues and wood finishes are forms of plastic, and I will include them.

Modern plastics, and modern chemistry, is a whole different world from eighty years ago, and I am glad to report that current uses of plastic are much better engineered.  Some of these parts are not only cheaper, but they really are an improvement over the old parts, taking advantage of the qualities of different plastics as materials.  Manufacturers are beginning to be less furtive, less scared of the older disasters.  Having tiptoed through the plastics revolution of the late 20th century, maybe the industry can enter the 21st more boldly.

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The Plastics Historical Society

Steinway Square Grand

Grand pianos come in two shapes:  the familiar wing shape, and a rectangular shape referred to as square.  Square grands are no longer made, which is why you don't see them often, but they were made as often as their wing-shaped cousins for more than half of the piano's 300 years of existence.  If you do see a square grand, it is likely to be pretty old.

This is one of many squares that I have maintained over the years.  It was made by Steinway in 1864, and it is in splendid condition.  It is not quite seven feet across, with a rosewood case, 88 keys, and two pedals.  The left pedal is a moderator pedal; it moves a rail with a thick strip of felt between the hammers and the strings to soften the sound.  It has two bass bridges, a tenor bridge, and a long, tightly curved treble bridge.  The tuning pins have oblong rather than square ends.

The regular wing-shaped grand has its strings more or less parallel with the keys, running from the keyboard back to the tail.  The square grand has its strings more or less transverse to the keys, running from left to right.  The wing shape evolved from the harpsichord.  There were also square harpsichords (called virginals), but the square grand evolved from the rectangular clavichord.  Wing grands stand on three legs, square grands on four.  The lid of a wing grand is hinged on the straight left side, and on a square is hinged along the back.

As did the wing grands, square grands became bigger and bigger over time.  Unlike the wing grands, square grands did not scale up well.  The transverse string pattern had to be fanned out such that the bass strings run left to right, but the extreme treble strings run parallel to the keys.  This requires a similar fanning of the hammerhead angles, key length, and damper felts, making regulation a nightmare.  More and more of the tuning pins were placed at the far back side of the piano, making tuning a nightmare.  Three or more bridges were needed to accomodate the stringing pattern, and the treble bridge developed a tight curve just at the point where the fanned strings all come together, creating a deadly weakness in the bridge.



What people liked about the square grand was that it was less expensive, and fit more easily in a small space - you could tuck it right into a corner.  When upright pianos finally became serious instruments, they took this advantage away from square grands, and by the late 19th century, manufacturers stopped making squares.  Or they wished they could stop making squares, because uprights were more profitable, yet demand for squares lingered.  The manufacturers made a statement:  in 1904, at a professional meeting in Atlantic City, they built a giant bonfire of square grands.  Even at that, I have come across a 1930's square grand made by Mathushek, an attempt at modernizing the square.

Square grands are not common, but they are not rare, either.  Many were made, and there is nothing particularly valuable about them.  You can get them easily for free, so don't get suckered by an antiques dealer.  They do not and will never feel or sound like modern pianos.  It can cost a fortune to fix or rebuild them because nothing about them is standard, everything has to be custom made or jury-rigged, the work is very labor-intensive, and therefore expensive.  Many technicians refuse to go near them.  There will be no return on your investment.

They are sometimes very pretty, always awesome, and make great conversation pieces.  They are often turned into desks and tables.  I've seen the legs turned into pedestals or small side tables.  If a square grand is in good condition, and you can find a willing technician, and can afford the repair, it can be a lovely and satisfying instrument.

Technician tips, click here . . .

Tips for Technicians

For tuning, remove the damper mechanism.  It comes out as a single piece.  First remove the stop rail, which is held in place with three or four knurled nuts.  Then slowly rotate all the dampers up, being careful not to catch any levers on the stop rail bolts, snapping them.  Holding the dampers clear of the bolts, remove the knurled bolt on the left, and gently lift and slide the mechanism to the left to slip the right pin out of its hole.  Place the mechanism on a horizontal surface, where it won't be stepped on.  Resume breathing.

If you have an oblong adapter, you can try using it.  I prefer a threaded oblong tip, but I hate trying to remove the tip of my regular tuning lever, it's usually jammed on pretty good.  I have a spare extension rod with a short head for getting into tight places.  That tip comes off easily, so I remove it and attach the oblong tip.  Then I slip that rod into the tuning handle, except when tuning the upper treble section, where it's easier to just use the naked rod.

For the treble section, hold the tuning lever at its end with your fingertips rather than trying to grip the whole handle.  As you lean way over, keep your shoulders relaxed, use your back as a cantilever.  Take breaks to stand and stretch.  Pay very close attention to which string goes with which pin so you don't snap a string.  The tuning pins are often labeled; wipe the dust away to see.  Believe me, you don't want to have to replace a string.  The string tension is quite low, so there's no point trying to stretch octaves.  For tapping in a loose tuning pin, hold the pin with a small adjustable wrench, leaving the top of the pin slightly above the wrench.  Then lightly tap the pin with a small hammer.

The most common adjustment needed is to correct rubbing hammerheads, and the most common repair is of the thread loops for the jack springs.  Both require removing the action.  If you need to correct rubbing hammers, mark which hammers need shifting.

Remove the keyslip by lifting it up.  Using a T hammer with a standard square tip, remove the three or four bolts holding the action in place from underneath the case.  Figure out where you're going to put the action before you remove it.  A card table works well.  I often work with it on the floor.  It will not fit on a piano bench.  Gently slide the action out of the case.  Slide it out perfectly straight and level.  It is big and floppy, so be careful.  Set it down.

Adjusting the hammers is straightforward, you'll see the problems right away.  If the leathers have worn through and the remains are flapping around, just remove them.  Only move the hammers that need it, don't get hooked into moving all the hammers around or you'll mess up the alignment with the strings.  If a center pin has slipped out, it may need replacing.  Perhaps the hammer butt has a split that needs gluing.  There is usually some mechanism for adjusting the friction on the center pin, so check that.

The jack spring thread loop is underneath the rocker that the jack is attached to, so you need to remove the key.  First, remove the nameboard, usually by removing two big screws at either end.  Then remove the hammer of the note whose key you wish to remove.  Make sure the jack is pushed down flat against the key.  Lift the key until it clears the balance rail pin.  This is easier to do in the treble than in the bass.  Then begin sliding the key forward.  Tilt it so the backcheck can clear the various obstructions.  Most of the time this works if you persevere.  If the backcheck is rotted, it may fall apart, and you may have to make a new one, so note how it is made.  Once the key is out, remove the rocker and replace the thread in the usual manner.  Make sure there is enough spring tension to make the jack return smartly.  After reassembly, check the key for lost motion.  There should be a little bit.  The hammer should sit on the rest felt, not be lifted above it.  Adjust the lost motion by turning the screws on the rocker.  Slightly loosen one screw first, then tighten the other.  Often one of the screws is obscured under a rail, so you can try lifting the key and pulling it out just enough to expose the screw.

When you are done with repairs and adjustments, carefully slide the action back in, keeping it straight and level.  About halfway in, stop.  Check under the plate in back to make sure that the hammerheads at the ends of the sections will not bump into any part of the plate.  Check all the jacks to make sure they are in the right position; if you had lifted or removed any hammers while repairing, the jacks probably flipped down, out from under the butts.  If so, just push the jacks back into place.  Make sure the hammerheads have room to pop up as you do this.  Finally, if you forgot to put the nameboard back in, now's your chance.

Resume sliding the action in.  If you feel resistance when it is almost all the way in, it is the damper wires having trouble getting back on the felt cushions that are glued to the keys.  Don't force the action in, you'll either pop the cushions off or bend the damper wires.  Go as far as you can, with a little pressure, then lift the damper wires from above until the offending wire comes free.  Then try sliding the action again.  You may have to do this a few times.  Consider adjusting the wire by rotating the leather rest nut and praying that it doesn't turn to powder in your fingers.  Or maybe leave the wire nuts alone.
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Chickering & Sons

Ah, Chickering - at turns eccentric, maddening, brilliant, heart-breaking!  Being a Boston Chickering fan is a lot like being a Boston Red Sox fan.  There's even the rivalry with a New York team named Steinway.  In the great Paris Exhibition of 1867, both Chickering and Steinway claimed top prizes (and fought over who had "won"), but even then, Steinway was in the lead technologically, and never looked back.

It wasn't that Chickering was not innovative.  Their penchant for tinkering was such that it is said that no two Chickerings were made alike.  Their innovations, however, did not often lead to an actual evolution of piano design and manufacture.  When the last Chickering brother passed away, in 1896, their pianos were charming, but obsolete by the time they rolled out the factory door.

The administration of George Chickering had been a disaster for the company, which had had to wait until he died to begin modernizing their designs.  Until the company was finally bought by the American Piano Company, twelve years later, it produced a run of more modern grand pianos.  Some of these "transitional" pianos are a nightmare, some are fantastic, and all are targets of eager rebuilders wanting to restore the glory and beauty of a Chickering grand.  This task has been the undoing of countless technicians who had no idea what they were getting into, and who did not have the skill to deal with the eccentricities and unconventionalities of these old Chickerings.  But the pianos sure are pretty refinished.



In Newport there is a lovely old bed & breakfast called Sanford-Covell Villa Marina.  The owner has her grandmother's and great-grandmother's 6'5" Chickering rosewood grands installed in the Victorian parlor.  The older one was built in 1892, and the other one is a transitional grand from 1903.  The description and close-up photos are of the older piano, on the left.

This grand, made in the waning years of George Chickering's tenure, has a pieced case of four parts:  the left straight side; a broad, curved tail; the curve of the right bent side; and the cheek, or straight portion, of the bent side.  Modern piano cases, in contrast, are made of a continous, molded rim.  The bass bridge is also pieced, in three parts, rather than shaped into a continuous curve (though the cap is continuous).  There is a separate bridge for the tenor section.  There are 88 notes, and all 88 are agraffed, an unusual feature.  Finally, the portion of the plate covering the slanted pinblock is a separate piece on top of which the rest of the plate is bolted.

It would take days to detail the arcana of the action.  It suffices to say that the function of the various parts resembles a modern action, but the specifics of their manufacture and assembly are entirely exotic.

Though apparently vexing for the countless technicians of the past century, this is a sweet, lovable, old-fashioned instrument, somewhat frail and rickety, but still pleasing to play.

The Newport Jazz Festival

Every year I look forward to tuning pianos at the Newport Jazz Festival.  The folks who run it have had a tendency to keep the same staff year after year (unless the relationship doesn't work for some reason), so for years I've been seeing the same people, meeting their spouses, watching their kids grow up, seeing pictures of their grandchildren.  Working at the Festival feels like a big family reunion.

I got the gig right after piano tech school (at the New England Conservatory), 23 years ago.  I wrote them a letter out of the blue, and they called me and asked for a quote.  I've been with them ever since.

A few years ago the founder of the Newport Festivals, George Wein, sold his company, Festival Productions.  The company had grown over the years, earning George the invariable title impresario, and ran several festivals throughout the world.  Many of the jazz festivals were sponsored by JVC, the Japanese electronics company.  All of us working at Newport realized that things might change under the new company, Festival Network, and the familiar "See you next year" came to be followed by "with any luck."

Last year the production team was replaced, but the field and stage operations stayed mostly the same.  The Festival seemed to go well in spite of the sour economy, though I could see that nothing had been done to rein in costs.  This was not a good sign.  So I guess I wasn't entirely surprised to learn that there might not be a festival in Newport this year.  Festival Network had lost a ton of money, the State of Rhode Island had not been paid, and permits had been revoked.  Then, just to add to the uncertainty, JVC pulled its sponsorship of all festivals worldwide.

Not wanting to lose his first babies, the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, George Wein has decided to disentangle himself from Festival Network and produce these two festivals himself.  This year will be the 50th anniversary of the Folk Festival, and the 55th anniversary of the Jazz Festival.  I'm assuming that George will keep most of the old staff in place, but one never knows, so cross your fingers for me!

You can check out the New Festival Productions website here.  While you do that, here are two of my favorite stories from the Newport Jazz Festival.

How I Met Herbie Hancock Underneath a Piano

The Festival hires me to come in very early in the morning to tune the pianos, which have been sitting on outdoor stages all night.  Then I remain in attendance all day, touching up the tunings amidst the chaos between sets.  There are two wings of the main stage; one wing is for the stage crew and all the musical equipment, the other wing is for the stage sound crew and their sound equipment.  I usually hang out in this wing and listen to what the sound engineer is listening to.

One year, during Herbie Hancock's performance, there was a terrific bang in the middle of a piece.  It sounded the way a significant electrical disconnection sounds, amplified through a gigantic sound system.  The music kept going, but the sound guys were wide-eyed, calling each other on walkie-talkies, checking the million dials and knobs.  Nobody could find the cause, everything seemed OK, shoulders were shrugged, and then Herbie ended his piece, got up off the piano bench, and climbed under the piano.

"Bill, Bill, get out there!" all the guys yelled, and I ran out onto the stage, as did Herbie's road manager from the other wing.  We had a breathless meeting under the piano.  "Are you the piano guy?" asked the manager.  I nodded.  "Good."  Then he pointed at Herbie; "Herbie, get out of here!"

The piano's lyre, which holds the pedals, had disconnected from the piano and dropped straight down onto the stage floor, with a bang, in the middle of Herbie's playing.  I guess Herbie was going to try to fix it himself.  The manager helped me put the lyre back on, and then we scurried to our respective wings, leaving Herbie to introduce his next piece.

I Tuned a Piano So a Guy Could Hit It With Sticks

When I touch up the tuning between sets, I have to be very focused.  It's loud on stage as the previous set is broken down and the new one wheeled in place, and the emcee makes announcements, and the sound crew checks things.  I stand and lean way down over the Steinway grand, straining to hear the unisons.  I stop to help with repositioning the piano, and then start in again, checking and retuning for as long as needed or as long as I can, until the stage manager calls everyone off stage.  Sometimes I have 30 or 40 minutes, sometimes ten.  I check the schedule ahead of time so I can mentally prepare.

One year, Bobby McFerrin was to perform.  The schedule said he was using a piano, which I thought was odd, so I consulted the tech rider and stage plot, and there it was - a grand piano tuned to A440.  All right, fine.  The piano was going to get heavy use in the prior set, and since there would be little to break down, and nothing but the piano to set up for Bobby, I was going to have ten minutes at the most to touch up the piano.  I was already sweating.

When my moment came, I ran out and got to work.  It was mercifully quiet, but much too soon the stage manager put his hand on my shoulder, and I put my tools away and walked to my wing.  Out came Bobby McFerrin, who greeted the cheering crowd, and then turned to introduce his accompanist, a big burly guy.  Bobby started singing, and I watched the big guy, who just stood there looking like he'd wandered, lost, onto the stage.  Then he pulled two mallets out of his pocket, and began drumming on the piano.  He drummed on the case, on the plate and the soundboard, and depressed the damper pedal and drummed on the strings.  He sometimes used the handle end of the mallet.  He moved all around the piano, drumming and tapping.  That was it.  I turned to a fellow crew member and said, "Wow, I just got paid to tune a piano so someone could hit it with sticks."