Are there any Square Piano restorers out there in D-I-Y land?

[nothanks]

A bit of a long-shot but ... is there anyone out there who has restored, is restoring, or has worked on a 19th century square piano?

[nothanks]

They're sometimes tuned to A415, rather than A440, so that's not surprising. Or (attempting to match the humour) ... you'd expect them to be sharp because of the square corners ;-)

[Graham.]

The problem with square pianos is they sound a bit flat ;-)

[S]

My wife has a upright piano..... which I had got for a song from work.... (literally, it was due to go into the skip and bought it for £21.06 via a workplace staff auction)

I then paid for a piano tuner to tune it up.

He assessed it by tickling the ivory and proclaimed it as completely flat...

I said, Its not flat, its a 3 dimensional shape.....

[nothanks]

[Paul]

It says here, it has to be restored, before it can be tuned.

Makes for a cheap instrument :-) Replacing all the strings, dampers, and degrade-able materials. I guess you get to keep the original wood.

You could keep the strings and the "untuneable nature", if you had one of these autotuners. Average operating power = 800W to keep the piano in precise tune. The

800W represents the amount of heat needed to pull the piano from initial tuning state, into tune.

So rather than rotate a peg to tune the string, it uses electricity and heat in the string, to set the frequency.

Paul

[alan_m]

These days you could use a spectrum analyser app on a mobile phone to tune each key. Play the one note, the app will show the fundamental frequency, rotate peg to adjust to correct frequency.

[Graham Harrison]

No, but a couple of thoughts:

1) Try contacting local piano tuners; they might know someone. After all they might have been asked to tune one. 2) If you have a musical museum (even if it's not piano specific) nearby they might have restored a square piano and be able to offer advice or point you at someone. 3) I've come across square/straight strung pianos in National Trust (and other) properties and they have all sorts of experts on call. 4) This is a bit more of a long shot but I wonder if one of the music colleges (Guildhall, Royal Academy, Royal College in London for instance) might be able to help?

[Nick Odell]

These.

And in the order Graham has listed them.

Nick

[newshound]

Simpler to pay a piano tuner

and this is before you consider that the double and triple strings are not tuned quite the same.

[nothanks]

Thanks, but I'm restoring one myself and wondered if there was anyone else here to (ahem) exchange notes with. I'm aware of several professional restorers but that's not what I'm looking for.

[Custos Custodum]

If you want it done properly.

[Nick Odell]

There are some useful hints to be picked up from the Lucy Coad video at

and there's a link to her company

There were lots of other places I was planning to refer you to but I haven't been paying enough attention because over the past twenty years or so, all of them seem to have gone.

Museums don't seem to be as approachable as they used to be but I'm sure there are relationships to be nurtured and there is so much expertise there that it is really worth trying. I think some years ago I mentioned here how brilliant the people at the V&A had been to me in the 1960s and how they had encouraged me to launch myself into a 50+ year career. And reading. My 1948 Groves' has about sixteen pages on the pianoforte and wanders in and out of discussion about the square piano through that + diagrams of actions. Reading whatever you can, where you can will build a useful composite.

There are plenty of people here who can contribute information on classic wood and metal work and finishing in traditional materials so if you have questions, ask away. Even if you don't have any questions it would be terrific if you pop in from time to time and tell us how things are getting along.

All the best,

Nick

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

But many have sharp corners. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Ha. Well I don't know much about tuning pianos, but some people have their pianos tuned to their signature sound. Listen to any Carole King track where she plays and it sounds different to how one might think it should. Not wrong but different. I guess its easier these days with electronic pianos to get any sound you like. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

That sounds a bit crude. The complexity of the innards of a piano used to fascinate me. Obviously its not just one string for each note which is tuned, but I never did get into the way it was all supposed to work. Brian

[S]

Thats not a square piano, thats a rectangular piano!

[nothanks]

I'm a long way from tuning but that's a useful link. Thanks. My aim is to try and get the Square P finished before the upright needs tuning so I can persuade the tuner to look at the Square and give me some pointers, but I don't believe Squares were typically tuned to equal temperament (or particularly stable) so tuning will end-up as DIY.

[nothanks]

Thanks for your interest, Nick. This is very much a "when the mood hits" project (as is finishing the Hurdy Gurdy and the restoration and duplication of an 18thC English "Guittar"). It needs to take second place to (in no particular order) renovating many Crittall windows and frames, making a parquetry oak floor for the lobby, extending the workshop, rewiring (mostly done), plumbing a new cloakroom, and making new cupboards for the kitchen, utility and larder. There's more but that's enough to suggest that the SquareP won't be a quick project ;-)

[Graham Harrison]

I think you're missing a possibility. For instance, a music school might have a student doing a PhD who would be interested in helping as part of a research project. The experts that might exist as contacts of the National Trust need not be professional piano restorers. There's a place called the Musical museum in Brentford. It's full of mechanical pianos, orchestrions, fiddles and the like. The man who founded it, Frank Merrick, wasn't a musician he was an electrical engineer; it was the innards of the machines that fascinated him.

Serendipity/coincidence happens all the time but you have to be open to it. For instance, my father was a concert pianist. Towards the end of WW2 he got a letter asking for advice on composition. Correspondance ensued and after the war dad suggested the young man enter one of the London music schools which he did. In the late 50s dad had lunch with someone from EMI who, out of the blue, asked if dad knew anyone who might be interested in a job. The young man was suggested amd he got the job. Some years later a tape appeared on desks at EMI and the young man picked it up. The band was the Beatles and the man was George Martin. Who would have thought a concert pianist who have a (several times removed) hand in the launch of a pop band?!

The problem with a straight strung/square piano is that people interested in them, who might be able to help you, aren't easy to spot and. I suspect, aren't professionals. It may well be that contacting a music school (e.g.) won't put you in touch with someone directly but one of the tutors may know an ex-pupil or a friend who can assist.

There are facebook pages, discussion groups and bulletin boards devoted to the piano.