Is there anything cool or useful in an upright piano? I always see them for free on my local FB marketplace and craigslist
Is there anything cool or useful in an upright piano?
Is there anything cool or useful in an upright piano? I always see them for free on my local FB marketplace and craigslist
Metal and metal wires.
You could turn one into a bar.
The satisfaction of telling a tale of when you moved an upright piano. Nothing more. The ones that stay in tune are extremely rare, the ones that are playable even more so. There is a reason why the previous owner wanted to get rid of it.
Looks like a b***h
Most pianos that aren’t damaged can be brought into tune, the whole “pianos that haven’t been tuned in forever are totally fricked” is kind of a misconception. It can happen but if you get a tuner that knows their shit they can usually bring a poorly maintained instrument back to life by gradually increasing the tension over several tuning sessions. If you tune it back up all at once it will fail for sure though. Depends on some factors though; if the piano is truly ancient and the strings or pegs have gone to shit it might need to be restrung and that’s often a pricey endeavor, pricier than buying a new entry level piano at least. If the piano was stored poorly and has humidity damage, water damage, rotting in the pin block, or actual physical damage to the soundboard is generally not salvageable obviously.
But most people don’t bother to get their pianos tuned at all, let alone once every 6-9 months, let alone having someone come in 3-5 times over a few weeks to fix a fricked up craigslist piano and then every 6-9 months thereafter
Is tuning these really that hard? or is it basically a big guitar that you use a digital tuner and small wrench on 150 strings instead of 6?
There's like a few hundred pounds of tension.
There's a youtuber that tunes pianos he finds in all kinds of condition. Just searching Youtube I find several vids. Did you bother, OP?
The younger guy I am thinking of, watched several videos of his. Says all the same things people have said here. Also how to repair stuck hammers, etc.
Ah, here he is: The Piano Doctor https://youtube.com/@PianoDoctor
If they’ve been maintained it’s more tedious than difficult. A piano is obviously way more strings than a guitar but in addition most notes have a unison string (basically a second string for the same note tuned to the same pitch) and some notes have a third string. It’s usually about 230 strings for an 88 key piano, the majority of which need to be tuned identically. And despite what you may think it’s actually best practice to use a tuner for the primary string then your ears for the unisons.
But if it’s been maintained yeah the process is basically just tedium as long as your ear is good. Get the wrench, a tuner, some string mutes. Isolate middle c, tune, tune the rest of the octave, check constantly, keep going out.
Once those are done work on the unisons in the same way. You’ll have less keys bc some of the low note will only have one string but the process will probably take a bit longer, especially at first, as you may want to add and remove mutes to isolate the unison to check tuning. Sounds dumb but after doing this for 30-40 minutes you start going nuts
Then you do the second unison, thankfully there are less of these so it goes a bit quicker.
Don’t forget to “set the pins” - tune ever so slightly sharp and let it naturally fall into proper tuning after a day or so to account for tension relief in the wood and such. Don’t touch the strings, use actual mutes. If you don’t have them they’re like $4. Oils on your hands will make strings rust
If the piano hasn’t been turned in ages as discussed earlier it’s the same process but you just want to take some care. If a is currently at 415hz as an example, wildly out of tune, like baroque era tuning shit, then you don’t just want to pull it up to 440 or 442 or whatever in one go. If it’s that bad you should be pretty conservative, maybe pull to 425 then wait a week or two, then when it drops to 417 pull to 430 and repeat, etc until good
Ivory Keys
You ain't kiddin'. A local hotel has TWO of them sitting under an awning, year around, for hotel guests and local meth-heads to plink on. They're big, heavy and bulky. Unless you can actually play, I'd leave them alone.
>Is there anything cool or useful in an upright piano?
Compared to the many other things you can do with work, time and money, NO. Every choice excludes or delays other choices. The wise DIYer internalizes that early.
Pianos are not tools so they make nothing.
They were bought by people who never used them because the idea of owning one seemed cool. They get offed because in reality they're shit made of worthless shit (no ivory keys on pleb grade etc). Piano strings can be used to cut out old car windshields and that's about it.
And fwiw you can just buy piano wire in small amounts for like $10 on amazon. Check the gauge tho bc you probably want the treble end for car windshields, the bass end is pretty thick and won’t be helpful for you really
I use both guitar strings and the wire sold for cutting out windshields which BTW is slow and unpleasant when trying to save the transparency.
Self and bro who taught me (it takes two people) were good at it and still broke two out of three. Given they're not intended to be removed in reusable condition that's not bad and they cost us nothing.