Thanks Sam,

Yes I thought the same thing. I wonder if they have not been in there that long….. I am trying to get a hold of the people I got the instrument from……. These could be of some value to them or others………

The earliest one is dated October 30 1869 (the one with H.R.H. Prince Arthur on the front).

This is just 2 yrs after Canada became a country through Confederation in 1867.

And the one with Louis Riel….he was a Métis that was executed here in Canada for high treason in 1885……. some other great stuff inside for stories.....

Ha! Scooter….no they can’t read but they sure can eat!

Years ago I was called to tune a rather nice Chickering grand. The center section of the action didn't work and it turned out the culprit was most of a carton of blueberry yogurt that had been spilled in the action. Everything visible from the top had been meticulously cleaned by the young man who had spilled it. What he hadn't counted on was the effect on the action of a month or so of yogurt absorbtion.

I commend you Dan that you are willing to contact the owner of the piano regarding the contents inside. I might do likewise. But, on the flip side, it's no different really, than buying a house and finding something left behind in it. You did acquire the piano legally including all of its contents. Just another twist to consider.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Tech Forum:

This is my new favorite PW thread. (Jeff Clef turned me onto this)

Many thanks for all of these stories—exactly the kind of thing I love!

Well Jerry, you just never know,

I just got a call back from the previous owners of the piano here. It seems that granddad passed away and the magazines were left to one of the grandchildren (beneficiaries of the estate.)

The people are coming to pick them up this morning………..very gratefully I might add…………..

Well, good for you Dan. That's wonderful!

No reward, Dan?

'Bummer!

'Tuned a couple of old uprights in a Quaker Meeting House where the complaint was that one of them didn't work. Sure enough, the keys wouldn't go down at all. When I removed the keys all the space under them was packed full of crayon pieces. I filled two gallon jars with the pieces of crayon. That was one busy church mouse!

Piano Girl,

Technicians lead very interesting lives as you can see.

Obviously you do lead very interesting lives!

One day you'll open up a piano and find ME inside. Although I've been known to sleep under the piano, and have had several occasions to be on top of the piano (don't ask), I've yet to be inside a piano. On the other hand, when I'm playing a beautiful instrument that has been tweaked and tuned by a talented technician, I really do feel like I'm inside.

I can't imagine popping the bottom board of an old upright and have a girl burst out. Talk about a heart attack. Tuner's batcherlor party? Can we keep what we find? Clad in a "G" string? (groan..) Keep the mice out anyway.

Wow - how cool! Thanks for posting the pics!

This thread is going to keep me awake all night, thinking about short story ideas!

Sam, I'm no stranger to the G-string, but that was in another lifetime.

Silverwood, those magazine photos are amazing. YEOW!

Hey Robin,

Good to see you on here! All of you other techs should read PIANO GIRL if you haven't already. A really enjoyable book!

How about the junk you SMELL inside? I played a private party once for a woman who owned several cats. She had a lovely/swanky New York City apartment and an A-list of guests...but the piano literally STANK. I am crazy for felines and have had them as pets my entire life, so I know cat pee when I smell it...and her cats were definitely using the inside of the Steinway grand as a littler box. That was the stinkiest gig EVER!!! The owner didn't seem to notice and I thought it would be rude to mention it. Maybe the kitties were commenting on her playing?
Robin

I have a friend that bought a antique english upright piano from the 1800s,from a estate sale in New Orleans. She wanted me to come and take a look at it. When I opened the bottom door I found a violin case, with a violin inside it laying against the lower bass of the harp. Looks like it had been hidden in there for sometime. That was the coolest thing I ever found in a piano. Mostly its dust, cobwebs, dead spiders and live ones sometimes or just small pieces and junk.

Thanks for sharing all the stories, very interesting to say the least lol, things you find in places you never expect.

J

"When I opened the bottom door I found a violin case..."

Maybe it was stashed away before Louisiana exempted musicians' instruments from seizure and sale of bankruptcy assets.... believe it or not, there was a thread about it the other day. Or someone shot the piano player. Fiddler carried off by fever or burned up when the Opera House caught fire; who knows, there could be all kinds of stories.

You would think New Orleans would be very unkind to pianos, but I know I've played some there. Some pretty old ones, too--- but not as old as that one.

What kind of violin was it? I wonder if it had any value to it?

The violin starts the thread drift to talking about "attic Strads". When you work in a music store, they come in clutching this find from the barn loft, wanting an appraisal. The paper tag inside indicates it to be worth millions...

I've probably told this before...

A woman called me to inspect and tune her grandmother's old Chickering upright, if it was tunable. I never heard such an awful sound as I played the bass notes. Before opening up the bottom panel, I was thinking the bass bridge had fallen apart...or something like that.

Turns out it was an old broken dining room chair, stuffed into the bottom of the piano...along with a whole bunch of books.

Removing all this really didn't help the sound much, and it didn't make the piano tunable, either.

This is a fascinating thread. Immensely enjoyable! Keep 'em coming guys......

When I was about 12, I went with my dad to a school (speaking of mice stories). When he went to push down some keys, they stayed put. When he removed them, he found a huge mouse nest that was preventing the keys from going down. We could hear a mouse scurrying around inside under the keys. As dad removed one handful of keys at a time, the mouse would scurry to the next batch of keys all the way up to high C. Dad grabbed a broom and got ready. When he removed the last key, the mouse took off running down the side of the piano with dad right behind him smacking at him with the broom and me standing there laughing my fool head off watching him chase this mouse all over the class room and back. The side door that lead outside of the building had been propped part way open. Finally, the mouse flew through it with dad right behind him whipping away!

After a few minutes, dad came in all winded. I said, well? Did you get him? YEP! I finally got him to stop running after I hit him a hundred times with the broom. And then? I squished him with my foot! That was the only mouse we found in the piano. He cleaned it all up, tuned it and ran off to the next job.

Well,
She took the violin to a music shop in town and found out it is a 18th century German Stainer? If that is the correct spelling. They said the violin will need to be restored, it has come unglued in places, but they said in restored condition would be worth around 4 to 5 thousand. The piano came from a old estate in the French quarter that a older couple had. The husband had passed a few years ago and the wife was moving to a retirement home. My friend contacted the daughter of the couple about the violin, and she apparently had no idea about it, she said the piano was brought over from England when her parents moved to Louisiana 45 years ago. She said no one really played the piano but her mother during the holidays. So theyy are uncertain about why it was in there?

My grandfather use to tune pianos before world war 2, and during the war he said he picked up several violins while in germany as a U.S. soldier in abandoned houses that were looted.
Said that pianos or any musical instruments were destroyed so american troops would not take them or play them. Using the butt of a rifle to break the hammer off of the action of smash the keyboard. So that is what i gather, that it might have been hidden for a certain reason years ago during that time maybe.

thanks
J

While working for Steinway I was tuning a piano in an apartment in Manhattan. The client said to me, "Look under the piano and see if my husband hid anything under there." She was referring to the beams under the soundboard. Sure enough, I found a wad of cash with a twenty on the top and a box of jewelry. She was thrilled. Another time, while out on my own, I found postage stamps from the 1950s behind the fallboard of a Steinway S. Also found a $100 bill one time when the customer wasn't home. I left her the bill and a note: "Didn't think you were going to MAKE money from my visit!" Another time, Dr. Robert Pace called me and I took my good friend, Ralph Bisceglie up to Dr. Pace's house to check out a problem with the keys. Dr. Pace was away for a week and came back to keys not working. Turns out, while he was gone, some squirrels got into the piano and feasted on the keys!

A 14k gold bracelet underneath the manuals of a Hammond B3.

Ken

Very interesting pianohead. Thanks for that information. I did not know they did that to their instruments.

In a German birdcage I found a aluminum German coin circa 1941 with a swastika on one side.

In a seldom used Baldwin L a perfectly preserved chocolate cookie, pertrified on the keys in the mid section. Grease from the cookie was soaked half thru the keys.

A pile of candied pecans 3 inches deep stacked on the extreme treble keys of a Gulbransen console, hauled in overnight by mice.

The wax of a large candle that dripped between low A and the keyblock of an upright and pooled under the keys on the bed. Customer always wondered how the candle mysteriously disappeared.

I agree with the earlier comment that this is the funniest thread I've ever read.

I'm not a tuner, but I am one of those crazy people who actually used to put things in my piano. During the last big recession during the early 80's inflation was out of control and I was scared the banks were going to go under so I took my life savings and bought gold Kruger Rands and silver bars and hid them in the bottom of my old upright piano. During the time that I left them in there the price of gold and siver tripled! Too bad I was still a student and my life savings didn't amount to much.

Did you sell them before the value of the metal crashed again?

That was back when the Hunt brothers tried to buy all the silver on the market. They ran out of their own money and then borrowed all they could lay their hands on. Interesting story - if anyone is interested just do a google on it. It was due to their crazy buying that the market went so high.

Ken