The term "rebuilt piano" can mean different things to people who own, play, and work with pianos. Our definition of rebuilt is that the piano has been restored to be equivalent to new. It should respond and sound like a new piano and last for another 60 to 80 years before it needs another restoration.
There are many things that can go wrong with a piano so an important thing to consider is that a rebuilding project should only be undertaken after all areas of repair and adjustment have been exhausted. A piano that is no longer responding like it should, that has buzzes or weak sounding notes that can't be fixed, or that goes out of tune often; may be a candidate for rebuilding.
Rebuilding prices may vary dramatically from shop to shop. Some of these ranges in price quotes are due to varying degrees of commitment to quality. For example, a high quality piano may require a rather meticulous series of parts replacement and adjustments. A lower bidder may be taking shortcuts in subtle areas that my go unnoticed by most people. They may reason that because it is a good piano, less effort will still yield an acceptable sound.
When evaluating competing bids it’s important to know what procedures are being proposed and the cost for each. You should also have an idea of your priorities. Is the appearance most important? The tuning stability? Evenness of touch? Tone? Longevity? It is important to convey to the technician your wishes for the piano at the time of the appraisal. Then they will be able to devise a proposal that addresses your concerns.
Many technicians will give the customer at least a couple of options based on the level of performance that will be expected from the piano. For example, a lower priced option would just bring the piano up to a serviceable and playable condition, whereas the higher priced option may make it look/sound/feel like a new instrument.
This is the large panel of wood (usually quartersawn solid spruce) underneath the strings and cast iron plate. Sometimes it is complicated to properly diagnose soundboard problems. Just because it may have a few cracks does not necessarily mean it is beyond repair. Conversely, the soundboard may appear fine but needs to be replaced.
The most important aspect of soundboard integrity is the presence of crown. All soundboards should have some crown, they should be bowl shaped with the crown rising toward the strings. The soundboard needs to support quite a bit of downward pressure from the strings passing over the bridge (the term for this is "down bearing"). This is mainly a structural design element although it can be convincingly argued that crown helps sound production. As with a suspension bridge, the soundboard is higher in the middle to support weight in the center. If a soundboard has lost its crown, it is not properly supporting the string down pressure. This condition can be manifest in several ways: the bridge may have sunk and is not intersecting the string line enough (not enough down bearing) to give good tone; the lack of down bearing subjects the bridge pins to extra stresses that may cause cracking at the bridge pins; overall tone may be acceptable but there may be sections that don't "sing" the way they should, this may be caused by a collapsed board that has lost it's resiliency.
There is no way to reintroduce crown into a soundboard. A soundboard that has lost its crown should be replaced.
The easiest way to check for crown is to crawl underneath (or behind on an upright) and feed a length of thread along the underside of the board parallel to the ribs from on end to the other at the longest point. Press the thread to the board at either end and make it taut. There should be a gap between the thread and the board at the center of the board. The gap does not need to be much (as little as one-sixteenth of an inch) but there should be something. Do this measurement at several places to confirm the results.
Small cracks in a soundboard are mostly cosmetic and do not affect the tone. They need to be watched for rib separation at the crack. This can cause buzzing. Shimming (gluing in wedge shaped slivers of wood) can stabilize cracks. Sometimes a severely cracked board does need replacement because the cracks have undermined its structural integrity.
The bridges are comprised of two pieces: 1) the long curved piece of wood that the strings pass over in the middle of the soundboard, and 2) the shorter piece under the wound strings. It is made up of laminated maple with a quartersawn maple cap that the bridge pins are driven into.
The bridge itself usually does not go bad but the cap is subject to many stresses from the strings. It is not unusual to replace it during rebuilding. Cracks can develop at the bridge pins causing buzzing and indistinct tone. Sometimes this can be remedied by removing the pins, filling the hole with epoxy, and immediately reinserting the pin, forcing the epoxy into the crack. If done properly this repair can be surprisingly effective. If the cracks are large enough a new bridge cap is usually recommended.
This is the block of wood (usually a hardwood multi-laminate) that the tuning pins are driven into. On a grand it is the area just below the music desk and on an upright it is at the very top inside the case. What usually happens after about 60 years is that the tuning pins become loose in the holes and can no longer hold the tension of the strings so the piano goes out of tune quickly. Another problem that develops is that the pinblock begins to de-laminate and crack. It literally starts to come apart.
If only the pins are loose and there are no visible cracks or delaminations, oversized tuning pins can be installed. This procedure is less expensive than replacing the pinblock but it generally only lasts about 10 years. Larger sized tuning pins make the job of fine-tuning more difficult for your piano tuner. In the past, some technicians applied "pin dope" to the tuning pins in an attempt to make the pins tighter. This rarely produced satisfactory results, as the pins would soon start to slip. Lately the practice has mostly been abandoned. Replacing the pinblock is the usual recommended approach. New pinblocks should hold the pins tight for another 60 years.
The cast iron plate is bolted to the rim inside the case. Plates have been known to crack. This can be caused by improperly setting the plate on the rim and exerting stresses on the plate. Poor casting at the foundry can also cause cracks. A cracked plate cannot support the enormous tension of the strings. Recently, bolting the crack back together has proven successful. Repairs involving welding are problematic because heating the cast iron causes changes in its structural properties.
Areas of the plate that need attention are the agraffs and the capo bar. The agraffs are the little brass attachments that the strings pass through at the beginning of the speaking (vibrating) length of the string. The capo bar is the strut on the plate in the upper treble sections that the strings pass under. These components can become grooved by the strings causing extraneous noise, buzzing, false beating, or just poor tone. Agraffs can be carefully reamed or replaced and the capo bar can be re-dressed by filing, sanding, and buffing.
The rim is the continuous bent board that encompasses the piano. It is made up of the inner and the outer rim. The outer rim is what most people see when standing at a piano. It is not much, about ¾ inch thick. The inner rim is much more substantial. It is anywhere from 4 to 7 inches thick and is the foundation that the rest of the instrument is built on.
The rim is constructed by gluing many layers of thin boards together on a form that is the shape of the piano. Once the glue dries it permanently retains its shape. Rims usually last forever and not much goes wrong with them. Occasionally, there will be some separating laminations.
The strings are simply plain steel wire in graduated thickness and copper wound steel in the bass. The piano needs to be tuned periodically to maintain pitch. Over time bass strings can become tubby sounding or may start buzzing. Sometimes twisting the strings helps the situation but there’s not much more that can be done short of replacing them. The plain wire lasts longer than the wound strings but it becomes brittle and dull sounding.
The action is the contraption that causes the hammer to strike the string by depressing a key. There are 88 identical mechanisms (one for each key) made up of small wooden parts with felt and leather pads connected by screws, glue, and pins. There are literally thousands of little pieces of felt and wood in the action. The main components are the key, the whippen, the hammer, the action frame, and the keybed (this doesn’t even include the damper system, more on that later). All these parts interact within tight tolerances and they must be finely adjusted to enable the key to work properly.
Over time the felts in the action become compressed causing the parts to go out of adjustment, requiring periodic regulations. The felts are sensitive to changes in the weather. In humid conditions, they become hard whereas in dry regions the felts stay supple much longer. Wayward technicians have also done a fair amount of damage to actions by application of various lubricants, specifically silicone and graphite based products. Technology is improving however and there are a few lubricants that are appropriate such as unscented talc and Teflon powder.
An action is a complex machine, a lot of things can and do go wrong with it. It takes most of the abuse of hard playing and yet it is the most delicate part of the piano. You should expect to have periodic maintenance performed to the action to maintain its proper working order.
The dampers stop the string from vibrating after the key is released. The right pedal lifts all the dampers and the left pedal softens the tone. On most grands this pedal shifts the whole action over so that the hammer is only striking two of the three string unisons. On uprights and a few odd-ball grands it moves the hammer closer to the string so that it travels less distance before hitting the string. On high quality pianos the middle pedal (called the sostenuto) sustains only the damper(s) of keys that are depressed.
The dampers are a separate system that is only a little less complex than the action. It too requires minute adjustments and periodic maintenance. Over time, the dampers become hard which causing buzzing and the key-end-felt (damper-lifter) felt become clunky. This system should be overhauled during rebuilding.
Piano veneers, case pieces, and finishing are at the apex of furniture standards. Top manufacturers have in general done a superb job with the exteriors of the instrument. Colors tend toward the dark and red spectrum with black being a very popular color. With age, the colors darken even more so that eventually its sometime hard to tell a old ebony piano from a clear coat.
Refinishing a piano is a specialized job. It should be contracted to a professional piano refinisher. Most furniture refinishers aren't familiar with the specific details involved in pianos. Many pianos have been damaged by well meaning but untrained refinishers.
The finishing of piano parts should be done with great care. There are numerous parts that, in order to function properly, must retain one or more unfinished sides. Only a qualified piano refinisher understands the precision of this work.
Moving and handling a piano are a concern during refinishing. The action should be removed and stored in a safe place. Removing the action can be tricky and should only be performed by a trained technician. The ivory keys and hammer-heads are extremely delicate and prone to damage.
Don't try refinishing a piano yourself unless you have some coaching from a technician, a suitable area to do it in and a lot of patience.
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