playing on the old school piano

[Bob]

ouch.... any advice?

What's the best I can do with a crappy old school piano.  Upright of course, slow keys, uneven.  It may be me, but I think some of it is this piano. 

[pianistimo]

hum along?

[timothy42b]

Ear plugs.

Your teacher uses them, why shouldn't you? 

[stagefright]

choose to play only pieces which alow you to get the best from that instrument

[arbisley]

Possibly slower pieces rather than exciting virtuosic stuff.
And I got over playing one by e few hours of very slow practice of the piece beforehand, on the day of the concert.

[leucippus]

ouch.... any advice?

What's the best I can do with a crappy old school piano.  Upright of course, slow keys, uneven.  It may be me, but I think some of it is this piano. 

I bought an old crappy upright.  Actually I have several.

Anyway, with my best one I guess I am fortunate in that all the keys seem to be well regulated relative to each other.  However, it was a bit sluggish overall, and a bit "muffled".  I took the action out and blew the dust off the hammers outside with an air hose.  Then I noticed that they all had mold growing on them - YUCK!  

So I took a cup of pure laundry bleach and a toothbrush and scrubed down each hammer individually.  Then blew them off again and let them dry.

Wow!  What a difference!  It's much more response now and has a brighter sound.  Plus is smells better.  

All the hammers are flat-footed though and need to be reshaped.  At first I was thinking about taking the hammers off one at a time and meticulously reshaping them.  But then I read in my piano rebuilding book that good results can actually be had by reshaping them while they are still mounted on the action.  Just using a power Dremel tool with a small tubular sanding drum.

I haven't done that yet, but I imgine that will make a huge difference when I do it.  In the meantime I want to tune up and regulate a second piano here so in case I screw up the reshaping job I still have something to play.

I got most of these pianos for free for the express purpose of being able to experiment and learn on them.  If I mess them up it won't matter because they were on their way to the dump when I found them anyway.  I'm a piano savior.  

I missed two opportunities to get some really nice free pianos too.  I was simply too busy when the opportunities came up.  But there's still a future out there so who knows what I might find next.

In the meantime Stagefright probably has the best advice - just play whatever the piano can do.

[overcast_32]

I feel your pain!! The piano I have is in much need of attention. It's quite slugish around the middle, almost to the point of unplayable on the G right above Mid-C...

I'm not sure if I'm up to the task or not (apprehension.. lol) but I would love to get it back into the best shape possible. Are there any good web pages and/or books out there that would be a good spot to start?

I'm not even opposed to tuning it myself, but I'm curious - how will a typical newbie fare on work like this? I'm making an assumption that I should not delve right into trying to 'fix' this up myself, but I may well be overestimating how difficult it all is too. I certainly don't want to underestimate it, I'd hate to do any permanent damage, that's for sure. Old school or not, I don't have extra cash for another Piano right now, and it would be painful to drag myself away.. lol

[Bob]

Yeah, I figured slow stuff would work.

I am the teacher btw.   I see this beast sitting there and have time now and then.  Why not squeeze in some practice?

It may be me but the piano seems to be pushing back.  I can't sink down into the keys well.  I could get a better sound out of it with a lot more concentration and effort.  And slow speed.

The keys feel like they need to be oiled.  They do feel sluggish.

Hehehe... It might also be fun to play around with tuning the beast. 


Any book recommendations for piano work?  "Piano tweaking for Dummies?"

[leucippus]

Are there any good web pages and/or books out there that would be a good spot to start?

The only book you need:

Reblitz Piano Servicing

I personally found pianos extremely easy to work on.  I had no idea that the actions remove with only 4 bolts and are easy to service on a table top and reinstall.

I'm sure piano technicians aren't going to be happy with me saying that.   But really, I've worked on some pretty complex stuff in my life and pianos don't even come close to being complex.  They are merely 88 very basic simple mechanism.  I think it's the fact that there are 88 of them is what scares eveyrone.  But Reblizt book certainly makes it all simple.  For me anyway.

[leucippus]

The keys feel like they need to be oiled.  They do feel sluggish.

Actually it probably is the keys too and not the hammers or action assembly.

The keys are very easy to remove on most old uprights.  Although you will need to take out about 2 or 4 screws to get at them.  Once you remove the top front and bottom covers (they usually come off with no screws at all).  Then you will need to remove some screws that hold the hinged key cover.  Once those have been removed you can just lift the keys right out.

The main thing is to keep them in order.  Usually they are marked pretty well with number from 1 to 88.   But Reblitz has a good method to mark them.  Just take a magic marker and a ruler and draw a straight diagonal line across the back of the keys (where it can't normally be seen).  Then when you take them out you can easily see how they have to go back in to get that nice straight diagonal line back.  This is explained with photos really well in his book.

In an old school piano you will probably find some pretty nasty stuff under the key (pushing up on them).  Just clean all that crap out of there and vaccum the key bed, then lay the keys back in place.  It will do wonders.

This will have absolute no affect on the regulation or anything like that because that is all done on the action which you won't be messing with if you just remove, clean, and replace the keys.

If I were there I could do it for you in exchange for some lessons,...

I want to learn Beethoven's Waldstien. 

[overcast_32]

Found this too last night - https://www.stevespianoservice.com/piancont.htm

Good starter page. Most of his information seems decent, I will get the above manual in addition; however. I'm of the school of thought that much good info can be found on the web, but by nature I like to double check things elsewhere.

I have a few 'dead' keys - they work, but the action's dead on them. After looking over that web page above I'm not sure, but it's very possible the jack springs are worn on a couple of those keys. I'm pretty well mechanically inclined, and this doesn't look very hard - assuming I apply patience

But I think for starters, I'm going to follow the advice here and give it a good cleaning. It doesn't look too awful dirty inside, but I'm not sure that will be the case when I actually start to dig into it!

As for the piano techs... well, I'm not the richest guy in the world. If I can't get this acoustic going, I may well buy an electronic. Cutting them out of any possible future tuning needs I may have. Tuning doesn't seem too hard, but sometimes I'm pretty content to pay someone else for particular jobs, espeically ones I would think a Pro would do far better than myself.. hehe