I've posted here many times but I'm getting closer to doing major work on my piano, so I thought I'd do a post to see what the technicians here think of my project.
I've decided that I want to get my piano to sound as good as possible until I will have the funds for either another piano or a full restoration, and since I'll be on a low budget for the rest of graduate school, this means it should hold for 3-5 years.
Though I've posted a lot about the hammers, I've pretty much decided on keeping them. I've learned to get tonal color with them that I'm happy with.
My main concern are the bass strings. They don't look dirty and they were taken off and cleaned at some point, but I think they are halfway toward being 'tubby', since they don't have all the high frequency overtones you get with new strings. (You can hear what I mean in the recording I have in my signature.)
I guess I have several options:
1. Absolute cheapest: buy new bass strings, replace one by one without new pins (the bass pins are very tight, tighter than the rest of the piano, and already are #4 pins, so I would just back them out a little ways and put the new strings on them.)
2. Remove all strings on the piano and replace them all, using the same pinblock, but buying new pins, since the tenor and treble, while not loose, are not as tight as the bass, and are original pins, #2 size. In the bass I would put in new #4 pins, in the rest I would put in #3 pins.
There is crown and downbearing, and the tone is great except for the loss of color and sustain that comes with old rusty strings. I know new treble strings will improve the tone because I replaced a couple of unisons and there was improvement.
Taking off the plate is basically out of the question, and, as I've mentioned in other posts, the action was completely restored in my piano in the last two years, so that's not an issue.
One of my main questions is whether I can do anything about the capo bar and the bridges. I've read that the termination on the capo bar is important and that grooves develop over the years, and these cause problems. Is there any procedure that can be done on the capo bar with the plate in the piano? (I can get pretty good access to it with the action removed.).
The other thing is the bridges. The bass bridge and lower tenor looks almost like new, but in the rest of the bridge you can see tiny 1mm or so cracks behind some of the pins. Somebody mentioned taking out the pins and putting in new ones with a little CA glue -- is this a good idea? Again, removing major parts like the soundboard is unfortunately out of the question. (The soundboard is in perfect shape with no cracks though.)
So basically, I'm trying to do a 'tooner' job at refurbishing my piano. I realize this is anathema to the perfectionists among you, but the quote I got for a professional job was 3k+ and I won't have that much money free for at least a few years. I figure I could do this job for about 500 dollars, and *if* I can manage not to damage anything, I can still have the professional job done in a few years.
Finally, I'm pretty sure I need to re-hang the hammers. The 5-6 octave area sounds best when I move the action out a few millimeters, but then the 7-8 octave area sounds weaker. I've seen a youtube video on how to do this, so I'm reasonably comfortable doing it. I'll be buying the necessary tools for everything. At any rate I'll probably do this after replacing the strings so that the hammer strike points are coordinated to the new strings.
