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This seems very unlikely. Many Bluthners were built without Aliquot strings. Including my own.

Oops. You're right. Though, I know of at least a few rebuilders who remove the aliquot stringing. There's actually (an unrestored) one sitting about 10 feet away from me.

My bad. I didn't realize the Bluthner on the eBay listing you posted had a carbon-fiber soundboard. The link for the Hurstwood Farms Bluthner that you feel may be the best sounding Bluthner in the world is going for 24k plus whatever the shipping and import fees one would incur to get it to the U.S., so the eBay piano might be quite a buy, especially if it only needs a little voicing work like you suggested.

I just recently joined the Piano Forum and after reading lots of different threads and posts, the one piece of advice that is given the most is to play a lot of different pianos and pick the one you like the best. Seems like that is what happened with this 1918 Bluthner......

Interesting-looking piano - as far as I can tell from the rather poor photo, the music desk seems to have been replaced by one not of Bluther design.

I wouldn't spend $99 on a set of AKG 240 headphones or a Shure 58 mic without knowing what it sounds like, much less a high ticket,
VERY personal item like a Grand piano that might possibly stay with me for the rest for my life.

I probably know at least 50 world class piano players here in LA from all walks of musical life--Jazz, Classical, Latin/Salsa, Pop, RnB and a mix of all those styles. I'd be floored if any of them would buy an older piano off the net without laying hands on it.

Unless of course it was more of a business deal where they themselves were going to have work done to it and then turn around and sell for a profit.
But to use has their own personal practice or recording instrument, sorry but

Hmm Beethoven,

were you aware of "built 1864"?


I personally am a fan of super old grands, but..this seems not to be the most common "north american approach" to grand pianos..

(BTW & OT The best Bluthner I've ever played in my life was an end 1950ies 5ft.baby grand 153cm with double repetitions. The very most lovely even silk and smoothest action I ever had under my poor fingers.)

Boyz.. there is a huge difference in touch with the Patd. action versus dbl. engl. rep.

Patd. action - You love it, or you should leave it. If the hammer shanks and the Bluthner special abstracts need a replacement, the material plus labour is >> 4k EU ie. >>5 k USD min. This then might be the financial collapse for an old beloved Bluthner grand. Price today told by a german Bluthner specialist. Time borderline for pat. action is around 1920, to my humble knowledge. So the youngest grands w. patd. action are 90 yrs "young".. And!! maybe very fine pianos.

Restored ones 6ft. start around 10k EU. The baby grands are most sought-after, seldom that you may find one below of 12k EU which is >>15k USD. (besides the concert grands which are really rare)

Bluthner prices are high also in Germany also if they are old ones.

In Germany sometimes you will see Bluthner grands w. patd. action for less than 8k EU which is a good 10k USD - but they normally are not restored. Sometimes I see them on ebay asking 3k or 5k EU "only" but may be a lot of work... and eventually in need of an abstracts replacement.. uuhhh...

Hi BerndAB,

Yes, I did see its age (I do like old pianos, too). But, it has had a lot of work done to it, apparently.

Really? That kind of pickiness is usually reserved for more prestigious pieces of equipment. It's got its place, I suppose, but I don't think I'd spend $99 on an SM58, period.




At the sub 5k price point, you're usually looking at a piano that needs reconditioning or rebuilding, so hiring a local tech to verify its existence and condition would suffice. If your friend changes the hammers (or does other significant work), its sound, and possibly touch, will change, making your having played it before hand moot.

On the other end of the spectrum, let's say you find a 10 year old Bechstein concert grand on eBay, sold by legitimate dealer for 29,000USD, you might suck it up and just buy it. I've seen it happen. I've also seen a piano professor purchase a Steinway B from the US and move it to Canada. The Internet has changed how people buy pianos.

BTW, I also know plenty of world-class pianists




Piano flipping for profit? Goooooooood luck... it's hard to do.

Del, I hope you don't mind me quoting you:

"We ask about soundboard crown as if that were the right question and if we could just find the answer to this then we could solve all of our rebuilding problems. Do[es] this soundboard have crown? Can we “restore” crown? How much crown does the soundboard need? And on and on and on.

I think we’re asking the wrong questions. The question is not, "How much crown does this soundboard have?", but "Why does this soundboard need any crown at all?

The answer is complex and, because we tend to view all soundboards as being designed and constructed to the same basic principles, confusing. Unfortunately, not all soundboards are created equal and, while the rules of physics don’t change, the way we apply those rules to the various types of soundboard designs does change. It is not a one size fits all sort of world.

...But, very briefly, we are after a certain balance between soundboard mass and soundboard stiffness. In some types of soundboard construction internal perpendicular-to-grain compression plays a critical part in creating and maintaining the requisite stiffness. It other types of soundboard construction it does not.

The question we need to be asking is, “How stiff is the soundboard system we’re working with?” If the soundboard has adequate stiffness without any crown at all then it is still stiff enough and we can forget about crown. If a soundboard does not have enough stiffness even though there is a fair amount of crown left in the thing, then it is still not stiff enough and more crown won’t necessarily help.

In an existing piano the only way we really have—short of some rather complicated tests—to find out if the soundboard we’re working with has adequate stiffness is to listen to the piano before we take the thing apart. Specifically, we can listen to the balance between attack volume and the rate of sustain. If the attack volume is extremely bright and percussive and the rate of decay is very fast—even if the apparent sustain at a greatly reduced volume level is reasonably long—we have a fairly accurate indicator that something has happened over time to reduce the designed level of soundboard stiffness.

If we make this determination then the question becomes one of what, if anything, can we do about it. Any attempts to restore crown are doomed to failure. There is simply no way to put any meaningful amount of lost internal compression back into a collapsed soundboard panel. That leaves us with external choices. One of these is the surface epoxy saturation technique I described in some detail in several Piano Technicians Journal articles several years back. This does not make any attempt to restore any crown but it does add to the stiffness of the soundboard panel. Another is to add short, intermediate, ribs to the bottom of the soundboard in those areas that seem overly percussive and which exhibit a too-fast decay rate." ~Del Fandrich (PW, 2010)

Additionally:

"I don't know about the cylindrical soundboard. I have read what has been posted here in the past. It somewhat sounds like "marketing hype", but what do I know? I think that the tone probably has as much to do with the way the rim is built, and then an inner rim of sorts built on top of the soundboard, as anything." ~Roy Peters, RPT (PW, 2007)




Well, that's not quite what what I said, but OK.




Yes, that's generally how it goes, but have you also seen posts that read something like, "I liked my piano a lot when I first got it, but now I don't"? Welcome to the forum.

This sums up, perhaps more clearly, why I think this piano was a bad idea:

"Whenever rebuilding a piano it is important to keep the long-term expectation in mind. Even a partial re-build is a serious expense for most piano owners, and their expectation
will be that a "re-built" piano will last a long long time before it needs rebuilding again. When you have collected all your data, and have the thing apart and can look closely at what you have to work with, you have to always ask yourself how long the work you are going to do will last.

Just because the block has torque now with oversize pins, will the 82 year old block suddenly delaminate in two years when you have a very cold winter? You don't know. The same is true of the board. Just because you have crown now, you may not have it in a few years. Not replacing a board when the pianos value does not justify it is often valid, but the customer should be made to understand that a choice has been made and that there is a risk involved. And there is a risk for you also, since it is your name going on the piano. A Knabe that you have rebuilt becomes a Knabe-Viviano and if it does not hold up, or if looks like a cheesy rebuild to some future technician who comes to tune it, your reputation that will suffer." ~Craig Miller, RPT (PW, 2010)

Fortunately for you, it's local. If you haven't made a trip there, you should! They're great people with great pianos!

Beethoven, now that you have posted five in a row, mostly quotes from others: if you just wait for a few hours, maybe someone else will chime in and this will not become a monologue thread...



The piano is surely not from 1864, this is quite clear from the photos. According to the serial #, the date is 1900. Personally I would be very wary of a "converted" Patent action Blüthner (if that is what this is). Trying to establish a new action geometry is something that can easily go awry.

To be fair, they were all direct responses from other people... But I'll try to not make a habit of it. As for the quotes, when an idea isn't your own, quoting with a citation is standard practice. Also, I'd rather look silly for that than look stupid trying to explain soundboards. That is still somewhat above my pay grade

Are you sure it's a 1900? He gives the serial number 6044, putting it at 1864, which I guess is pre Patent Action. The plate also looks quite different from the 6'3" Bluethners from the early 1900s that I've seen. At the same time, 1864 seems really early for a cross-strung grand that isn't a Steinway. Thoughts?

Jurgen, I think you are mistaken - are we talking about the same piano? This one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120682931788#ht_1494wt_1139

is said to have serial number 6044. This is likely to be correct. Or at least, there is nothing obviously wrong. The plate, the legs, the style of the lyre, and the brass plaque showing prize medals affixed to the lid are all typical of Bluthners with serial number less than 10000 (approximately pre-1875).

The Bluthner web site gives 1864 as the date for this serial number. The true date is likely to be a bit later than this, probably early 1870s. Is this early for a cross-strung grand that isn't a Steinway?

Interestingly, this is not before the Patent Action era. I have a photo of no. 3997 which clearly has a patent action.

Unfortunately the music desk of no. 6044 is missing.

Sorry, I got mixed up with the serial #. It still looks too modern for early 1860s in my opinion.