Del,

I'm not sure by what weird logic repairing a Ford passenger car compares with restoring a vintage piano, but the conceit, such as it is, sounds juvenile. You would be better off, rhetorically at least, comparing restored vintage automobiles with restored vintage pianos, and even that would require a surfeit of crude logic, because, as far as I know, Ford is not competing in the vintage car restoration business . . .


Mike

People with current and recent model vehicles do get in wrecks and need their cars repaired, not just old model T's. Ford's decision not to set up body shops at dealerships doesn't factor into their decision to supply everyone else with replacement parts.

However, which is more logical, to take a 1969 Mustang to have it "restored" with a mixture of original and new old stock parts or to have Ford chop and build up the old frame to convert it into a 2011 Mustang?

Rich,

If you have people working for you rebuilding Steinway pianos who "actually built these pianos new", then you have some very old former Steinway employees. Considering that you promote the "Golden Era" of Steinway pianos, I am guessing that your employees where building pianos for Steinway in a different era. (unless the Golden Era was more recent.....)

What kind of custom car is this?
I'd be more than proud to own it.
I had a 67 in 87.

BTW Chip made a few modifications.

Looks like a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro to me. Could be a '68, but I'm guessing it's a '69.

Charles

Compare the side marker lights, the trim in front of the rear wheel and the spoiler.

http://myclassicdreamcars.com/camaros/1969-camaro-ssrs/1969-camaro-ssrs-2/

Charles

Hi Gavin,

Welcome aboard.

Please forgive my terrible writing. I meant that I have employees that worked at Steinway in Astoria building new Steinway pianos - and that worked in the restoration center.

I did not mean that they were now at Cunningham rebuilding the actual pianos that they built as new instruments years ago at Steinway. That would be a great story though if it happened!

This reminds me of something my father said to me as a teenager. As he listened to me relay an event over dinner (as I used typical teenager slang) he waited until I was done speaking, turned to me and said dryly, "Richard, I love the way you have taken up English as a second language."

I love my Dad! I guess my language skills have not improved that much over the years.

Hey Rich,I would say that your language skills are just fine. In the context of your statement, anybody would assume that one working in the factory in the 20s would not be lifting Steinway D rims at present, though working at Steinway could be like working out at the gym.
Hmm...No AC in the those NY summers in the factory
I would say it is a known fact that the "golden years" is of the turn of the century,teens,20s to the pre war 30s. I don't think the CBS era was considered to any as the golden era.

You're right. The CBS years were more like "salvaging a dying company—and piano—from otherwise certain death.”

And your comment brings up a question—I’ve heard many folks talk about Steinway’s “golden years” and it has long puzzled me. What is it about the pianos built during those years that cause otherwise sane and logical people to go all gaga over them? Their design was certainly no better than that of today’s Steinways. Their materials were good but they are good today. Their workmanship was often crude by today’s standards. What is it that leads folks to this conclusion?

(Note: I’m comparing the pianos of one hundred years ago to today’s pianos, not those built from roughly the 1960s to the 1990s.)

ddf

Del,

When people go gaga over vintage Steinways, I think it is often just the romance of thinking about the Steinways of the past that were the instruments played by the great pianists. There are wonderful pianists now, but the world is a different place and there can no longer be pianists thought of the way a Horowitz or Rubinstein or Rachmaninoff were thought of, and they played on those vintage Steinways, not on current Steinways.

There are some pretty compelling aspects of the "golden era" Steinways. The first one that comes to mind is the A3, which I think is a better design than today's A2. I also love the NY Steinway Cs from that period which no longer exist ( and the Hamburg C is quite a different animal )
The soundboards had a lower impedance and the hammers were lighter in the "golden era" Steinways compared with today.
There are also several purely cosmetic areas in which the older Steinways were nicer including the extra detail on the cases and plates along with some really spectacular veneers that you don't see today.

Could you explain more what you mean by this?

The world doesn't value concert pianists the way it did. I am not saying that a current pianist couldn't play the piano as well or better than the legends of the past, I am saying that no matter how well someone plays now, they are much more culturally peripheral than those of the past and therefore will never be generally thought of with the same kind of adulation and even worship.

Just seeing if anyone would call it a Foose!!!

Very true.

Add to this that it seems a new, word record setting pianist is being introduced every Monday morning from some part of the world...

Norbert

Del, Having facilitated hundreds of Steinway grand restorations over the years,there is a pattern that develops post restoration comparing a full blown restoration of a vintage golden era core piano vrs ones of maybe the 60,70s and 80s in particular. The vintage era pianos result in a superior piano post restoration.
You have to take the recent manufacture Steinways out of this equation in that few are being remanufactured of the later 80s,90s up to the present. Actually the brand new NY Steinways of 2011 look very much like new Hamburg Steinways from underneath as for fit and finish.
I still believe there is a seasoning factor in the rim /case itself along with the casting of those beautiful decorative script cast harps. I have completely finished spec Steinways of both the vintage era and newer era Steinways. The pianos speak for themselves. Aside from the rim and the harp controversy,there is a major difference in the original keyset composition along with both the naturals and the sharps.
They were definitely NOT Kluge keysets in the later years and downright sub standard in their construction and compoisition..In a full restoration that new Kluge keyset is not always in the cards or the client's realistic budget.

The assembly /workmanship of the CBS era kind of reminds me of the Aeolian era of Knabe and Mason & Hamlin in those later years. If you remanufacture a later era Aeolian Mason, do you think it has the potential of a pre 1932 Mason & Hamlin core piano ? I don't think so.
With a full high level remanufacture of a newer Mason, a high level restoration firm could restore the piano superior to when it was new of the later Aeolian era.
I agree that CBS saved a dying company from sure death but at a high price at the time.

But this is an elusive dream. No one alive today really knows what those pianos sounded like when they were new. We can speculate about what they sounded like back then and we know what they sound like today after the ravages of 100 or so years have taken their toll. And, of course, we know what they sound like today when restored by a competent rebuilder. But I’d say that much of what these pianos sound like today has to do with the skill and knowledge of the rebuilder of today and less with the actual design and original build quality of the pianos. Any rebuilder who has done more than a few of these pianos knows well how poorly and inconsistently some of those old bridges and soundboards were made; how poorly some of those plates were cast and machined; how poorly they were installed and fitted to the rims; how haphazardly some of those actions were fit and aligned; and the list goes on. Today’s rebuilders cope with these things as a matter of course.



OK. But these are models—and I’d include the Model L which I prefer rebuilding to the Model O—that can’t be compared to anything Steinway is producing today. Well, the Model C is still available from Hamburg but not from NY.



The soundboards have lower impedance today but was it lower when they were new and still (presumably) had some significant amount of internal compression? Keeping in mind that all of the crown and a fair amount of system stiffness in these boards comes from the perpendicular-to-grain compression within the soundboard panel. To be sure, hammers were lighter and less dense but this, while it does have an effect on the tone performance of the piano , does not really speak to their construction and detailing.



These things are available if we’re willing to pay for them. They are costly now just like they were back then.

I only bring this up because I’m puzzled about why we generally regard the older instruments as being better crafted and having better materials than the pianos being built today and I don’t buy it. While I don’t particularly care for the tone performance of many of the modern pianos as they come from the factory it seems to me their build quality is at least as good if not better today than it was a century back.

Comments?

ddf

Core pianos are core pianos. The biggest problem with more recent core pianos is that the asking prices are unrealistic. They need the same amount of work—in some cases more—so it makes no sense to pay the prices most often being asked for them. But that is another issue. I’m just pondering results here, not economic feasibility. After all, the original question was about how to approach pianos from different eras. My expectations are basically the same regardless its year of manufacture. As you say, everything built with Pratt, Read keys needs a new keyset. But other than that things are going to look pretty much the same. Both are going to need new soundboards and bridges, new blocks, new actions, hammers, dampers, back-actions, etc. The newer pianos will need more cosmetic work to make them look decent. But I don’t agree that there is any particular performance benefit to be gotten from “aged” rims and plates.



The assembly/workmanship of the Steinway pianos had declined significantly before CBS purchased the company. It was during the CBS years and later that the build quality stabilized and began to improve. Even the Teflon bushing fiasco was an honest attempt to make better actions.

And, yes, I would expect the same level of performance from a remanufactured 1980s Aeolian M&H that I would expect from a pre-1932 instrument. Again, both would be getting very similar work; new boards, blocks, actions, etc. It would take a lot more cosmetic work to make the later instrument look good but aesthetics has little to do with performance. It will, of course, make a big difference if you’re trying to sell the piano at a profit.



If I understand your comment, yes, I agree. A good rebuilder can rebuild a dying-gasp Aeolian M&H to look and perform better than it did when it left the factory. The same will be true if the core is a Steinway. Or a Baldwin.

And this brings up a whole other question. Can our rebuilder take either a 1920s or a 1980s M&H and make it superior to a new M&H of today? Probably not. Workmanship and materials notwithstanding there have been design improvements in the new instruments that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to equal when starting with an older core; and it won’t matter if that core comes from your golden age or from M&H’s pot metal age. This is not the case with Steinway. The changes made to the design over the years are not significant enough to keep the modern rebuilder from equaling or surpassing the performance of the new piano. The fact that the build quality of the new piano is arguably better than it has ever been will not keep the rebuilder from at least matching the performance of the new piano.

ddf

Years ago, when I was more interested in wood finishing, I got a Fine Woodworking book. Adventures in Wood Finishing, by George Frank, who had been in the finishing business in Paris between the wars. One of his adventures was working with a cabinetmaker who had been commissioned to copy a Louis XIV chair borrowed from the Louvre, expenses not to be spared. Eventually the cabinetmaker asked Frank how he would copy the 300 year old finish on the chair. Frank replied that the finish was less than 10 years old. The cabinetmaker asked if Frank thought chair was a fake. He said no, but that every time someone polished, waxed or oiled, something was added to the original finish. So the original finish was then modified by 300 years of caretaking, carelessness, wear and accidents.

The same thing happens to the performance of a piano. The sound and touch is modified by wear, age, and by the maintenance work we techs do. This makes so much difference that Steinway often leaves the last finishing touches to the local technician, although as pianos wear and get serviced, the same thing will happen to other makes of piano as well, even those that have the highest standard of finish when they leave the factor. As each tech has his or her own particular set of skills and tastes, every one of us will do things a little different. I would not expect identical pianos that come out of Del's or pianobroker's or Keith Kerman's shop, nor one that I work on to be like that piano coming from the factory, nor would any of them sound or play exactly like any of the others. Put them all under the care of the same person, and eventually, they may converge somewhat. In the end, they all may be excellent pianos, as long as they are well cared for, even if they are all different. After all, when we compare pianos, there is no one absolute standard of excellence.