Hello. I finally took time to take pictures of my piano.

Album 1 (Outside)

Album 2 (Inside)

It is an empty player piano.

What do you think?


Sam

That piano has some serious fundamental problems, judging by the photos. It would require complete restoration from the frame up. If you're willing to do a total rebuild, which will cost a lot of money and time you'll never get back, then have at it. Otherwise, sadly, the piano's not worth the effort.

Major issues:

1. The piano's been exposed to a lot of moisture. There's a lot of rust, and the dust has been caked on because of it.
2. The number and size of soundboard cracks leads me to believe there are probably multiple unglued ribs, likely beyond repair (i.e., new soundboard). The broken cantilever on the bass bridge needs to be replaced.
3. Needs to be restrung.
4. Needs major action work; probably replace all of the action parts, and certainly new hammers.

Very cool, thanks for sharing the pics!

Yeah its certainly got issues, but in this case I'd just say it makes it a good candidate for a tinkering piano which I think is whats Sam's intent is. You don't really have to be too afraid of messing it up because its already kind of a mess And I mean that in the best way possible. Its a cool old piano, and being a bit of a mess is just part of that character. It will probably never be feasible (at least cost wise) for it to be restored to pristine condition, so anything you can do to it is giving it a new shot at life

You probably wouldn't want to invest a lot of money on hammers etc, but who knows, maybe you can scrounge up some decent cheap used hammers, damper felts, clean up and re-felt the action, etc and have some fun and end up with something you can enjoy playing and working on without much cost. Most of the hammers could probably just be filed, and I've heard of people using leather of all things to repair treble hammers that don't have enough felt left for filing. Could be worth trying. The bridge, strings and soundboard are probably bigger issues, but given cost constraints, I'd just focus on getting things stable if you can so at least they don't get worse. If it sounds ok to you without any major buzzing etc. maybe you just don't worry too much about that stuff If its noisy, or if the bass strings around that broken section don't sound well, then figuring out a repair could be interesting.

Best of luck,
Rob

If it's just for tinkering , then yes, by all means. Like Rob said, a good candidate for that.