tack piano

[indianajo]

I seemed to have missed the last train out of town on old upright pianos.  Prewar pianos like Frankie Carle  and Joann Castle used to play?  Kid Rock had a nice plain one at his concert at Graceland on PBS-TV 2 years ago,  You know, the tall pianos with the slightly sour upper octaves, like Beethoven era historic pianos sound like on the radio from Germany?  the PIano festival at Wuppertal on the radio played Beethoven on a historic piano three years ago that sounded just like an old prewar upright through the ether.
 A couple of years ago old uprights were everywhere, now they are not listed on craigslist or in the charity resale shops either.  Three years ago I passed up a 190? Sohmer a hundred miles from here for $100 and a 1911 Steinway upright (not a console) for $300 20 miles away. Two years ago SA had a nice sounding Knabe? with a fancy case that went for $150 in a week, I should have jumped on that one.  Perhaps the charity resale shops have quit taking uprights, and people have to pay to haul them to the dump?  
I have been looking for one to play Scott Joplin and Fats Waller on, in addition to my 1941 Steinway 40 console.  Also R&R backup, and Joann Castle covers.
Any way one showed up at Salvation Army last week, a Kerble?  nice case, 2 broken hammer shafts on the top octave, foam replacements on some dampers than seem to work, polyester replacement of a lot of straps.  It has a medium speed action, and a miserable tone.  It might sound better with the front taken off, but it is not very resonant. I'm a bit spoiled, my Steinway console has holes in the front that throw the sound at me instead of waiting for the wall to do it.   $200 for the Kerble, I'm sure in a month they will negotiate.  SA throws spinets in the dumpster all the time.
I was thinking, would this be a good candidate for tack piano?  I saw the swampers playing a tack piano on the Independent Lens PBS show rerun yesterday, in the studio at Muscle Shoals AL.  Did anybody famous play tack piano?  How do you keep the tacks from falling out?  Did Joplin or Waller play like this?  Has anybody here ever played one?  I've played a hundred or so old uprights in Sunday School assembly rooms,  mostly with missing ivory keys, but none ever sounded like tack piano to me.  
Before somebody brings up a programable rubber keyboard toy, I don't want of play one of those. The oligarchs of the orient took all the music manufacturing jobs around here, I'm not going to pay them for their efforts.  I'm 20 miles from a dead piano factory (Kimbal's were very short lived pianos, no great artistic loss), 40 miles from the dead Conn organ factory, 70 miles from Baldwin's home (prewar) in Cincinnatti.  

[silverwoodpianos]

A rinky tink bar can be fitted to any upright. The bar is the same as the muffler rail but instead of the   horizontal felt strip there is a leather piece cut into strips vertically, a half inch wide with a rivet hammered into the end where the strike point of the hammer is.

Of course tacks can be placed into the hammer set but that would empty the hammer of tension or most of it.

[jimbo320]

Why not just get a really good stage piano and duplicate whatever sound you're looking for?

[indianajo]

Why not just get a really good stage piano and duplicate whatever sound you're looking for?

Why not get a good stage piano every 6 years? since they might last at least that long. I'm so tired of import oriental **** that lasts weeks or months at best. I'm immobile today because a Shimano bike shifter lasted 3 months, until I got a piece of grass tangled in it.  (The original Shimano derailleur that came on the bike lasted 18 years) When is the last time you saw a Yamaha DX7 on stage? Been 20 years for me.  The church just replaced their soundscape mixer and entire fleet of Behringer radio microphones at 10 years - with more oriental built ****.  At least you can buy a mixer or microphone made in USA that might last if you actually use your brain instead of the town dump for all your worn out oriental ****.  My used Peavey mixer made in Mississippi is a 1998 model, road battered from the band but works fine.  My used Shure mike works fine.   These old upright pianos I'm looking for are 80-100 years old. Yes, some of them were ****, but some of them still work fine.  And you can still buy repair parts, unlike your lastest electronic marvel.
The long life stage pianos were Rhodes and Wurlitzer (with occasional e-capacitor replacement ), and I've already got a 100 year life Hammond organ (H182 with new e-capacitors) adjusted to sound like a Rhodes.  Where would I get samples of a tack piano? Rent the Muscle Shoals studio for a few days?   The recording studio here in town doesn't have any wood piano; if I make any recordings It is going to be in my music room with Peavey  Shure and Intel equipment.
Or I could buy a long lived Jinghu (Bejing opera fiddle) and play real oriental music.  eeeeeeeeeeek!!
Thanks Silverwood for the mechanical suggestion for a good place to put metal instead of the hammers.  I have a grommet tool and might try some polyester backing strip instead of a $100 piece of leather. The reason I called it "tack piano" is that what the swamper called it on the Muscle Shoals Independent Lens TV show.   

[silverwoodpianos]

Tack piano, jangle piano, junk piano, honky-tonk piano or harpsipiano….lots of names for the same thing.

Canadian Glenn Gould experimented with a tack piano custom made by Steinway, which he called a "harpsipiano" (a portmanteau of "harpsichord" and "piano").

The intent was to recreate the sound of the harpsichord. One of the problems with that idea is the fact that in a harpsichord, the strings are plucked instead of struck.This instrument was capable of dynamic expression as on a piano.

Gould played Contrapunctus IV from Bach's Art of Fugue in a 1962 broadcast.

 One of the few occasions he conducted was while playing the harpsipiano: he directed Bach's Brandenburg concerto no.5. I believe a recording of this can be found in the Gould collection.

 Another problem that arises with the tacking of the hammer felt is at times the tack become dislodged and drop into the mechanism causing mechanical failures or breakage.

A better way is to over lacquer the hammer set like the Steinway vertigrand piano popularized by English pianist Gladys Mills which is in Abbey Rd studio.

Regarding the rinky tink or mandolin attachement which consists of the aluminum drop bar with the locking attachment, 72 riveted tabs, felt strip for the bass section, cable and control for underneath the keyboard is $95 US

[indianajo]

Ooh, so cool, a grommet strip you can put on or take off with a control lever!
I'll troll through the rest of the Steve's piano service site, I never heard of such a thing as a tack piano until last fall's Muscle Shoals show.  I had no idea JoAnn Castle Frankie Carle etc was using metal in the piano until Jimmy Johnson mentioned it on TV.  But it is obvious now.
$100 for a Salvation Army upright piano, $150 truck rental and helper, $100 for a rinkytink bar.  Cool. And I can take the metal off if I want to practice Moussorgski or Beethoven in my country trailer (caravan).  I lost a lot of strength this summer while I was out mowing the lawn and hiding from the city ozone. With no heat in the trailer, mice and raccoons eating their way through the floor and more expensive objects, I don't want to put a decent piano out there, just something to keep my strength up and occupy my mind with art on rainy days or evenings.
I've got a nice quasi-harpichord sound coming out of my Hammond H182 organ with the percussion circuit.  "marimba" percussion can be more harpsichord, "glock" is more rhodes electric piano.  Of course I've super modified the preamp circuit with fast ceramic capacitors instead of the old tired electrolytic ones.  But playing the organ this summer didn't keep my muscle strength up for Scott Joplin on a console piano.  
Thanks for responding, Silverwoodpianos.