•Regarding the Tim Mattice 1914 Chickering rebuild: I have good friend who earns his living by buying, rebuilding, and selling old Steinway grand pianos. He repairs or replaces what is needed. He always refinishes and restrings the piano. He resells the pianos for more than I would want to pay, but ...

•Tim Mattice wrote: > [one local tech said] "This old piano isn't worth it." Wrong! Good sounding pianos, well rebuilt, bring top dollar. > The other says, "It wouldn't make that much difference." Absolutely wrong! > The #1 bass string sounds more like a 55-gallon drum > falling off a truck than any...

•Tony Marsico wrote: > Hi, Does anyone have an original scale for a Marshall and > Wendell Ampico grand, 5' 4". The scale was not original when > I removed the strings and I'd like to put it back the way it > was built originally. Any help would be appreciated. Same thing happened to me with a diffe...

•Years ago I calculated the wire size and tension for restringing a Wurlitzer player piano. I was using a Radio Shack Model 1 computer, so that gives an idea of the date. I measured the vibrating length of each string, and the wire size, entering each into the program. This gave me the present total...

•I would like to get the restringing scale for a Bond/Packard upright piano serial number 26593 (circa 1923). It has Scale 22 written on the plate. Charles Davis

•[ Charles Davis asked in 021118 MMDigest: } > I would like to get the restringing scale for a Bond/Packard upright > piano serial number 26593 (circa 1923). It has Scale 22 written on > the plate. From John Travis' book, "A guide to Restringing": Packard Upright # 109067 13 5 13.5 4 14 5 14.5 4 15 ...

Just a note on the stringing scales for wound strings: There are many different ways to build bass strings, and they all have _slightly_ different characteristics. The software takes into consideration basically the desired frequency of each string according to the length prescribed and just uses th...

Book re: restringing: "A Guide to Re-stringing" by Travis, John W. 508 p. with illustrations. dynix#526463 dewey dec. # 786.23 It has selected scales for several pianos. There are also many older books with scads piano scales listed amd probably most providers of new strings would have those books. ...

•Larry Mayo was looking for stringing scale etc for the Monarch player. I restrung a 1925 Monarch and the notes I have show the pin height at 26/32" (13/16"), the pressure bar at 7/32", and strings per notes as follows: size 13: 12 notes, size 14: 10 notes, size 15: 13 notes, size 16: 8 notes, size ...

•As a few more asides to stringing an old piano with new music wire, I'd like to comment a bit more on some ideas mentioned here. As I said in my first post, I have never had to tune a piano more than once to get it stable after I strung it and chipped it about 20 cents above pitch the first time. I...

•Bernt Damm wrote: > American pianos need re-stringing but the German ones do not. > We attribute this mainly to the fact that the American strings used > steel and not copper for the first layer of the 2-layer bass strings. > Somehow this rusts severely, creating a dull and tinny sound. This is str...

•Greetings friends, After re-stringing our Cremona nickelodeon I was digging through some old rolls to see how they sounded. One of our favorite old original rolls is Columbia "A" roll #1672, the "Bohemian Roll". We have been asked on several occasions to get this roll re-cut, which we may yet get t...

•Hi, Does anybody know the stringing details of a Meinhold's Accordzither (Autoharp). It has 30 strings and I bought a set of Zither strings which has 36 in the set. On the Zither the A#, D# and G# are not there on the treble end where the strings are marked. On the bass end I have no idea which is ...

•I restored a Seeburg L in 2009 and my piano technician, who was re-stringing it, wanted to tune it to A=440, so I posed the question to Art Reblitz. He confirmed that virtually all orchestrions, apart from Nelson-Wiggen, stuck with A=435 till they ceased production in 1929. So your xylophone is rig...

•The market value pretty much depends on the area you live. The price for the re-stringing, pinblock and soundboard repairs sounds reasonable. If you're lucky all it will really need is repinning with the next larger size pins. I've run into a number of the Ragtime pianos with loose pins and questio...

•Stephen Powell writes: "I agree with Jon Page regarding the bass strings." I second that with an example of changing the stringing scales. Del Fandrich, now in the Seattle area, re-designed the stringing scale on my 1922 5'6" J&C Fischer. We changed eight bass notes in the third octave from two wou...

•John Tuttle wrote in MMDigest 981119: > Does anybody have any examples of a block delaminating to this > degree under any circumstance except improper stringing practices? I would question whether the pinblock was supported from below when the new pins were hammered in. If it was not supported, it ...

•Bruce Clark was worried about overly tight pins. This can sometimes happen, particularly when a new pin plank is drilled and then left for a month or two before stringing. Another problem can be drilling with an undersized drill bit. The danger can be to twist off the pins themselves. They will bre...

•I am currently having a case of a fat cylinder box, circa 1851, restored. The inlay on the top has brass stringing around the inlay and has a blue composite material as part on the design. It also has a material that is creamy in color with bright high lights, not unlike mother-of-pearl. This is in...

•It gets more confusing because many piano manufacturers labeled their upright pianos as "Upright Grand". This, I was told, referred to the stringing. Before about 1850 (and much later in Europe) all pianos were "straight strung". That is, the bass strings didn't overlap the treble strings. Scale de...