Old Uprights

[Mark Dierauf]

Pat -

 Some years ago, I did one of these, a 1911 H F Miller upright. It was a
piano that I intended to use as a personal instrument until such time as I
could find a customer willing to pay for all the work I put into it which
was more than $3k at the time (about 14 years ago). I removed all the bridge
pins and sanded down the bridge tops to remove the grooves, then repinned
and restrung the piano. Every piece of action cloth & felt got replaced, and
I hung a new set of Steinway hammers on it. New dampers and damper-lever
cloth, restored the ivory keyboard, rebushed keys & refelted keyframe.
Someone before me had "refinished" the piano with flat black paint, brushed
on. They had actually done a pretty fair job of it, and it made me wonder
why people who paint old uprights so often seem to choose florescent pink,
barn red, or OD green when flat black is such an obvious choice and looks
(reletively) good, but I digress. Anyway, the piano sounded great, except
fot the first few tenor notes which are so often a problem on HFM uprights
(due to their extreme fore-shortening and therefore low tension), and the
high treble had that too soft, unvoiced Steinway hammer sound because of my
inexperience in dealing with these hammers at that time. Several of my
technician friends were also highly impressed, and the customer who ended up
buying it (after I had enjoyed it for several years) said it had a very
"noble" tone. I know that given the choise I'd much rather have that piano,
or one like it, than any of the new, smaller uprights available. However,
I'm somewhat more of a realist now, and I don't think that there's much of a
market for these pianos at prices that I can make a living at. Too bad!

- Mark

>
> Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 23:43:12 -0600
> From: "PAT A RALPH" <KENNETH.GERLER@prodigy.net>
> Subject: Old Uprights
>
> List,
>
> In St. Louis the Scott Joplin has been donated a 1890-95 Henry F. Miller
> UPRIGHT that was rebuilt.  Not being able to see the inside, I don't know
> whether the pin block was replaced, but the soundboard and all the rest of
> the inside has been refinished and all new tuning pins and strings.  It is
a
> beautiful instrument and sound pretty decent also.
>
> Ken Gerler
>