DIY piano tuning/restoration?

September 13, 2012 11:52 AM

I just came into possession of an old piano. It's quite a nice one -- a 1920s Heintzmann 'grand in upright form'. It hasn't been tuned for, I'm guessing a decade. When I opened it up it was quite clear that it had never been cleaned -- there was a good 90 years worth of dust and other detritus. So naturally I took it to pieces.

Which turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated. I removed the action and the keys and blew them out with a shopvac, then cleaned out the inside of the case and got as much gunk off the strings as I could. Then I put it back together again.

So, it all seems to work perfectly, mechanically speaking. No problems with the soundboard, keys all level. It's about a quarter tone flat so I have a tuner coming tomorrow to do a pitch raise and tune.

The main problems seem to be that the hammer felts and damper felts are really freakin' worn, so it's a bit clangy in the treble and there's some noise from the dampers in the bass. One of the bass G's is a third flat (ie sounds as an E) which worries me a bit -- how did THAT happen? The keys are not bad but could do with cleaning or possibly refinishing. The cabinet's all scuffed but I'm not to worried about that.

ANYWAY, has anyone attempted to restore a piano? I"m thinking of doing it myself. Initially I think I would just file the hammer felts and maybe file or restore the dampers, then start thinking about the keys.

Secondly, I was thinking about buying a tuning hammer and mutes and after the initial tuning, doing it myself. I'd use a chromatic tuner for the reference octave and then do the rest by ear. Anyone tried this?

FWIW the piano seems to have been in the same family from new and I think it's only been moved a couple of times. Judging by the music in the stool that came with it, it probably hasn't been played regularly in 30 years, but seems to have had plenty of use before that.
posted by unSane (14 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Well, the tuner turned up today, raised the pitch and tuned it, and it sounds very nice.

I then adjusted the 'lost motion', ie the dead space between the beginning of a keypress and it actually engaging the action, which turned out to be trivially easy if a bit boring. Literally just turning 88 capstans 1/8 turn at a time until there was no slop.

The only excitement was that the battered piano stool which came with it collapsed under my weight about half way through, resulting in an enormous crash and my wife running downstairs to find me sprawled on the floor.

This site is an absolute treasure trove of information and materials.

I'm pretty confident having watched the guy that I could do a touch up tune pretty easily. Once the center octave has been set the rest of it -- tuning by unison and octaves -- seems pretty mechanical. I noticed that he used the Cleartune app on his iphone to do the temperament, which is the same one I use.
posted by unSane at 1:50 PM on September 14, 2012


Heintzmann's are great pianos. Our old family piano, now at my parents place in Muskoka, is a Heintzmann. Had many a dreaded piano lesson on that one...my brother and I would fight over who had to go first when our mean teacher pulled up in his Corvette and fur coat.
Looks quite similar to your piano, actually.

The piano we have here in Toronto is one my wife inherited and it's a piece of crap. We had it tuned a few years ago and the tuner guy (this young, nervous dude who groaned and complained the entire time) wouldn't bring it to pitch because he thought the whole thing would snap apart and kill us. So he just sort of tuned it relative to itself for $150. All the hammers are shot and the ancient little mini belt things that hold them on are falling apart. He said it would cost a couple grand to refurb it. No thanks.
I just pitch shift everything 2 and a half semitones when I record it, and in the winter when the odd random keys get wonky I just crank the pegs with a rusty pair of pliers. Works like a charm.
posted by chococat at 2:10 PM on September 14, 2012


My tuner guy was also a bit nervous about bringing it up to pitch but eventually he convinced himself after warning me he was going to break some strings, which he didn't. He said it would probably be out of tune by the time he left the driveway, but once it had settled it should be stable next time. He was right - it has already drifted a bit. He charge me $160 for the pitch raise and tune, which took him a good three hours, and many many passes over the treble.
posted by unSane at 3:22 PM on September 14, 2012


Today I took a deep breath, removed the action again, and filed down the hammers.

I tried doing one of the hammers in situ but it was way too hard.

It was a bit tricky at first until I got the hang of it, but then it went pretty quickly. I used a $4 10-pack of emery boards from the drugstore, and just basically reshaped them to their original shape, removing the grooves as much as I could. It took about three hours and was kind of messy with felt and felt dust flying everywhere. I skipped the last five hammers on the treble side as the felt is very thin at the point of the hammer and I didn't want to screw them up.

After I did the first few and realized it was going to be a long job, I tried a dremel with a flexible drive cable but NO NO NO, it's way too easy to screw the hammer completely.

I cleaned up the mess of felt with a vacuum and put the action back in and HALLELUJAH it sounded fantastic. The harsh clanging had completely gone. I still think I could improve it a bit, either with more filing or maybe a bit of needling, but it is most of the way to sounding awesome.

The tuner told me he would charge $125 to file the hammers which is not a bad price considering how much effort it was and how much difference it made.
posted by unSane at 6:49 PM on September 15, 2012


I usually lurk Music, but this is a really cool project! Good luck, and will you please keep us posted? (:
posted by undue influence at 5:50 AM on September 16, 2012


So today we had Needling of Hammers. They were still much too bright for my taste (I like really mellow pianos), especially in the two octaves up from Middle C. So I took a deep breath and opened it up again.

Having watched a couple of videos and read everything I could find, I used a thing like a dental pick that I had in my toolbox. I started with the brightest, harshest note, which was the E above Middle C. I pricked it a few times on the upper and lower shoulder of the hammer. It didn't make much difference. So I got a bit more aggressive, and eventually I tamed it some. I quit while I was ahead, and then set about trying to make the rest of the piano match it, using chromatic scales to compare notes I'd needled to notes I hadn't.

I had to get pretty aggressive with some notes (mainly white) while some notes (mainly black) didn't need much at all. But I tamed the two worst octaves in about half an hour. The brightness is much less noticeable in the higher and lower octaves, so I stopped there for the moment.

The biggest thing I noticed is that it's now possible to play PP without the pedal, which is a big change.

Like everything else so far, it wasn't difficult, just required a bit of patience and research.

It's still not as mellow as I'd like but the next thing I'm going to try is brushing the hammers a bit, which should have the same effect, but wears off fairly quickly, so I feel a bit freer to experiment.
posted by unSane at 4:46 PM on September 17, 2012


(The key to needling is to get the piano sounding consistent, so rather than blindly doing every hammer, you get one note ringing the way you want and then try to match the rest of the piano to that).
posted by unSane at 4:47 PM on September 17, 2012


Yesterday I took a deep breath of my own (I'm completely NOT a handy person) and decided to DIY-repair my old 90's Yamaha 12 string; the bridge was coming up completely and 2 different shops told me it would cost between $150 and $300 (which is probably what it's worth.)
posted by chococat at 6:17 PM on September 20, 2012


I'm not a handy person at all, either, Choco, but I've sort of learned how to do it all by trial and error. It's not always pretty but it does usually work! It's a total truism but usually it's having the right tool that makes all the difference.

What's going on with the guitar?
posted by unSane at 5:15 PM on September 21, 2012


Yeah, it's the "having the right tool" that seems to be the problem, when none of the right tools seem to be available in Canada.

So I got the bridge off and sanded everything off all nice and pretty.
Then I drove all the way out to Busy Bee in fucking Concord Ontario because it's the only place in the GTA that carries Titebond (Original) glue (because all the boards say you can't use Titebond III which was the only other Titebond I could find.) Luckily I bought one 4" deep throat C Clamp there on a whim, because the place I headed to next, Atlas Tools on Queen St. in Toronto, couldn't find the 6" deep throat C-clamps they said they had on their website, and on which my whole plan was based.
So with only one clamp and the help of various luthier websites, I sort of invented a jig/clamp thing that would distribute the pressure of the clamp across the bridge. I glued it last night and I'm waiting 48 hours so I'll let you know.
posted by chococat at 7:52 PM on September 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


Great thread and all the best to both of you.
posted by grog at 8:03 PM on September 21, 2012


I feel your pain! Making your own tools is very satisfying though, at least when they work....
posted by unSane at 8:07 PM on September 21, 2012


In progress...
After the scary bridge removal, a methodically slow process involving a putty knife and a hairdryer. Came off pretty clean, though, compared to a lot of pictures I'd seen.

Then lots of careful sanding.

Then the invention of a clamping using with scrap wood, about $1 in hardware and some of that felty stuff that you stick to the bottom of your furniture so you don't scratch the floor.
Clamp rig view 1.
Clamp rig view 2.

Also there was some chopsticks involved, to register the bridge exactly back onto the string holes.

Who knows if it's going to work, I really have no idea what I'm doing.
posted by chococat at 9:43 PM on September 21, 2012


Success!
I sanded off a bit too much of the finish but I don't really care.
The intonation isn't perfect but it probably never was. I can file down the saddle a bit when I have the inclination.
posted by chococat at 7:26 PM on September 22, 2012 [1 favorite]


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