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Topic: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand  (Read 2681 times)

Offline drewp

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Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
on: July 13, 2012, 06:26:42 PM
All right, folks. What I'm about to describe may sound like a monstrosity, but please bare with me and offer some practical help, if you can...

I'm in the Republic of Georgia and recently got a Soviet-built baby grand for a couple of hundred bucks. 40 wires are missing from the lowest register. They say a few supersticious janitors in the 90s thought there was gold around the low-register wires. So, they neatly clipped all those strings away! It also has a couple of hammers missing and needs some adjustment.

I called in the only expert in the country for this kind of work and was told he'd charge me $1000 to fix it all. (Each wire, he said, costs about $20)

Times are tough. I need to explore other options. So, here's my question:

Can I take one of those taller upright pianos (they're as cheap as 40 bucks here) and remove the wires from it to fit on my baby grand? How significantly would this affect its quality? My piano tuner, who occasionally replaces strings, said he could place the wires and repair the hammers. How bad is this option?

I am a pianist and I just need a nice piano in my living room, to play, rehearse and maybe do occasional (semi-amateur) recordings. Nothing super important, but it won't be serving as furniture either.

Thank you all, in advance!

Drew


Offline iansinclair

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #1 on: July 13, 2012, 06:47:50 PM
Have to admit that my first reaction was the good old southern USA "say what?"! of disbelief.  Then I read the rest of your post.

And my reaction has changed to "use it up, wear it out, make it do -- or do without".  A northern USA saying.

It may well be possible to make it work surprisingly well.  It's not going to be a Steinway or Bosendorfer, but... 

First thing I'd do is give that grand a really good looking at.  Is all that's wrong with it some enterprising idiots removing some strings and some missing hammers?  Or are there some more fundamental problems, like a bad sounding board or a hopeless pin board or something of that sort.  If not, then...

The thing to remember about restringing any piano is that a string has two characteristics: length, and weight per metre.  What you will need to do is to find strings from the upright which are long enough for the proper place in the grand -- and which are as close to the same weight per metre as the original string in the position you are replacing as you can possibly get them.  Ideally it will be exact; in practice, it may not be -- but it should be very very close indeed.  The reason for doing that is that then you will be able to put the correct tension on them when you tune them to keep the tension across the whole piano balanced.  If a string is too light for its position, it not be stretched as tightly as it should be when it is in tune.  This unbablances the piano, and also hurts the way the instrument sounds (a tight string "sings" more and longer than a looser one).  Conversely, it if the string is too heavy it will be too tight.  Not quite as bad in terms of tone quality -- but possibly much worse in terms of stress on the instrument.

Just my opinions of course, and probably one of the techs on here will have more and better comments.

Good luck!
Ian

Offline hfmadopter

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #2 on: July 13, 2012, 07:22:59 PM
A couple of things come to mind immediately. One is that a big no no in restringing a complete bass or even nearly complete bass is that you do not remove all the strings from the bass without letting down the strings on the rest of the piano. far better to do one string at a time than that. Now this piano has been sitting with 40 strings missing from the harp for I assume years. You need to watch for warpage in general and or a cracked harp. Start there before you even consider moving on. if either of those is the case then you might as well move in the 40 dollar upright and start playing that, since it's probably a whole piano to begin with.

Secondly, the strings in a piano are progressive in diameter from highest register to lowest register, also length which is what most people see on their own. With bass strings single and double wraps, single string per key, double strings per key and often tripple strings per key in the bass are important features which some of which without the old strings you have no idea what was there ( unless you can see another complete piano like yours) And if you see a complete piano like yours then ordering a universal bass string set is an option, though you would need the diameter of each string and the length of the wrap on each string and general length of each string. THen a tech or the installer at any rate, unwraps the universal string warp to the correct wrap length and clips it and the string itself to proper length. This is 90% successful in shorter grands ( less than concert length grands) and maybe 40% less expensive than custom strings in a set, far less than individual string pricing I might add..

I don't know what to say from here, the above is what I know. Your idea is novel for sure but I have no idea what kind of sound that would make from your piano !

The hammer is less of a problem.
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline drewp

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #3 on: July 13, 2012, 08:58:27 PM
Thank you iansinclair and hfmadopter for the replies. It's incredibly kind of you to take the time and share your expertise. I feel reassured and will go ahead with the project.

I'm a little concerned by hfmadopter's comment. This baby grand was indeed sitting there with only the bass missing for years. But the expert I called in from the conservatory checked it all (spent about 30 minutes looking) and said the harp was OK and the sounding board was in perfect shape. I was skeptical that it might not sustain tuning well. He said he didn't see a problem. Maybe he just wanted to take the job so he could make a nice $1000 bucks (gigantic pay in Georgia). In any case, he seemed to be a man of good character and was sure that he could fix it well.

And yes, we happen to have far too many grand pianos of this exact make all over the country. It was the standard baby grand here, all over the place - music schools, conservatory offices, small university halls, etc. It's called Krasniy Oktyabr (красный октябрь - transl. Red October). It's the exact kind as in this surreal video I found here:


I printed your replies and will translate them to my tuner. He'll then go around looking for a suitable upright piano. Almost every house has them, as was the tradition in the Soviet Union. People often give them away for free, as long as you can get them out of their house. Grand pianos on the other hand aren't exactly abundant for easy acquisition.

Offline hfmadopter

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #4 on: July 13, 2012, 09:21:13 PM
Thank you iansinclair and hfmadopter for the replies. It's incredibly kind of you to take the time and share your expertise. I feel reassured and will go ahead with the project.

I'm a little concerned by hfmadopter's comment. This baby grand was indeed sitting there with only the bass missing for years. But the expert I called in from the conservatory checked it all (spent about 30 minutes looking) and said the harp was OK and the sounding board was in perfect shape. I was skeptical that it might not sustain tuning well. He said he didn't see a problem. Maybe he just wanted to take the job so he could make a nice $1000 bucks (gigantic pay in Georgia). In any case, he seemed to be a man of good character and was sure that he could fix it well.

And yes, we happen to have far too many grand pianos of this exact make all over the country. It was the standard baby grand here, all over the place - music schools, conservatory offices, small university halls, etc. It's called Krasniy Oktyabr (красный октябрь - transl. Red October). It's the exact kind as in this surreal video I found here:


I printed your replies and will translate them to my tuner. He'll then go around looking for a suitable upright piano. Almost every house has them, as was the tradition in the Soviet Union. People often give them away for free, as long as you can get them out of their house. Grand pianos on the other hand aren't exactly abundant for easy acquisition.


I wish you luck and if your tuner passed the harp and sound board you should be in good shape in that regard. As to holding a tuning, for that you have to start tuning to really find out. Perhaps he found the tuning pins substantially high above the harp mount area and assumes it will do well based on that. And it may well do just that. My 1890s grand that hadn't been tuned in years, now after it's third touch up tuning is holding well ( i do my own tuning and minor other work, mild regulation, change a string here and there).  If the pins take a set when backed off to a final tune and the pin block is tight then that's just about what's required to hold a tune.

I have to assume with so many of these pianos around and so many uprights around that the tuner has been down this road of installing upright bass strings in one before ?

David
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline pianolive

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #5 on: July 15, 2012, 10:33:57 AM
Forget it and buy a deasent upright untill you can afford a grand piano or have this old one stringed right.
If the basstrings are gone, new ones must be calculated to fit in with the scale.
Ask on www.hellerbass.de for advice and how much they will charge for the strings.
And there was no gold wire in the piano! Cupper is was and maybe that was what they were after.

Offline hfmadopter

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #6 on: July 15, 2012, 10:59:41 AM
Forget it and buy a deasent upright untill you can afford a grand piano or have this old one stringed right.
If the basstrings are gone, new ones must be calculated to fit in with the scale.
Ask on www.hellerbass.de for advice and how much they will charge for the strings.
And there was no gold wire in the piano! Cupper is was and maybe that was what they were after.

I agree. Also if the piano is old enough it could be that just the outer winding was copper and the main string steel.

Strings can be made from an exact duplicate sample piano though by measurement. Read these pages on universal string sets and also custom made string sets: https://www.vandaking.com/piano-strings.html
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline drewp

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Re: Fitting upright wires on a baby grand
Reply #7 on: November 10, 2013, 10:17:07 AM
Just wanted to post an update, in case somebody ever wants to do a similar thing.

I called in another piano tuner to tune one of my uprights in another room, and asked his unbiased opinion about the project I was to start with the other technician. He said that the quality of those Red October grand pianos is so poor that it would hardly compare with the East German upright he was tuning in my bedroom. It's just not worth spending money on.

All right, then. I'll save money to buy a decent grand. Thanks everyone, for the advice.


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