Same old ignorance ... use a professional piano mover.

[Ron Nossaman]

> Dear High Point Music,
> 
> I am in the process of getting ready to market my house and I gave away 
> an old piano. The problem lies in the fact that the piano did not make 
> it to its destination...if fell off the truck and smashed. Now I am left 
> with a smashed piano on the back of a friend’s truck. Is there somewhere 
> that takes them for parts? Or, do you have any recommendations? Any help 
> or advice would be appreciated!
> 
>  
> 
> My response was to take it to the city dump.  I just glad that no one 
> was hurt.
> 
> Kindest Regards,
> 
> Garret


This is a mildly edited version of a newsletter article I 
wrote some many years ago on just this thing.
/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

"It ain't the fall I mind, so much; it's the sudden stop."

Trajectory: The path described by an object moving in space; 
esp., the path of
a projectile.

This is not normally the sort of descriptive word we use in 
our day to day
dealings with pianos. As a rule, we generally tend to think of 
pianos as
fundamentally monolithic units having roughly the weight and 
mass of the heel stone
of any famous Paleolithic Druid Observatory you could name. 
This is essentially
true, but (I'm sure you are beginning to fear) not the whole 
story. Despite
their ponderous presence, pianos almost universally harbor a 
secret wish to
fly.

Nearly all of you have seen the aftermath of a piano's ill 
fated attempt to
"Slip the surly bonds of earth" and grab some air. This sort 
of desperate bid
for freedom usually occurs during the physical relocation of 
the instrument, as
in the change of domicile or the unreasonable insistence of 
some member (the
boss) of the house that the piano must be moved to a floor 
either higher or
lower than the one it currently occupies. In the case of an 
altitude relocation
within the house, the piano's chances for aerial freedom are 
somewhat limited.
The best it can realistically hope for is a brief but intense 
rush down a flight
or two of stairs hoping that it's progress isn't 
disappointingly impeded by any
slow or inattentive individuals down below. The folks on top 
aren't a problem.
When the piano initially breaks and runs, they immediately 
yell, let go, and
jump back out of the way. No matter how sharply honed the 
reflexes of the
"downhill" contingent of the moving team are, it's still 
pretty tough to beat a
stampeding piano to the bottom of a flight of stairs. Catching 
a charging piano
is something most people don't instinctively jump to do. Many 
a well meaning
helper has discovered this as he suddenly finds himself all 
alone in the path of
a rogue piano. The final alternative, at least in the narrow 
enclosed stairways
leading to most basements, is to attempt to climb over the top 
of the rapidly
descending instrument and get to a place of safety among the 
leaping and yelling
"uphill" faction of the moving team. This would seem to be the 
more attractive
alternative, affording the best opportunities for immediate 
survival and
subsequent retribution, but I have yet to see this done 
successfully.

The process of relocation from one residence to another offers 
a much richer
range of possibilities for the aerobatically inclined piano. 
Imagine a large,
heavy item on a narrow wheelbase four wheeled dolly, balanced 
at the top of a
sideless ramp, six feet above a concrete surface by a crew of 
two who, less than
thirty six hours ago, were flunking out of arts and crafts at 
Light Lode
University. Now, ACTION! Sometimes, pianos don't need any 
nominally human help
to take the plunge from a moving van. I've seen the results of 
these spontaneous
bursts of gravitational optimism. Use of the word "burst" here 
is not altogether
unintentional as the results of a piano leaping out of a 
moving van without the
aid of ramps or any other altitude modification prosthesis can 
affect a
surprising amount of real estate. also, to avoid any 
misunderstanding concerning
the designation "moving van", let me clarify that the vans 
were of the moving
variety and not, themselves, in motion at the time of the 
incidents. Pickup
truck moves, however, are a different story.

The first year I was in this business, I got a call from a 
reasonably harmless
sounding individual inquiring whether I would like a free 
piano. My personal
cynicism not yet having developed to it's present degree, I 
asked him about
the circumstances surrounding this admirable philanthropic 
gesture. "Oh hell",
he said, "The damn thing fell off the truck." Wow! This was 
still new to me and
I just had to see this for myself. I got the directions to the 
intersection
where the piano still was (it had apparently happened about 
ten minutes before
he called) and headed out. What I found was the remains of a 
piano at peace with
it's life's ambitions. The guy moving it had, with the help of 
another
individual, muscled it into the back of the pickup. They 
collectively reasoned
that pianos are heavy, like gravel, wouldn't move around, also 
like gravel, and
therefore needn't be tied down. They then drifted from their 
basic gravel
analogy by installing the moving accomplice in the back with 
the piano to hold
it in case of load shift. BZZZZZ! Wrong, thank you for 
playing! They should have
stuck with the gravel program and had the poor guy in the cab 
where he was safe.
The piano, sensing that the walls were down, seized it's 
opportunity on the
first curve and, shrugging off the panicky attempts of the 
cargo master/smashee
to restrain it, took majestic flight over the port side and 
rolled casters over
lid prop at forty miles per hour, shedding any parts 
unnecessary to the process,
along fifty feet of ditch. It met a violent end but, for a 
brief but glorious
moment, It flew! The guy in the back was vastly impressed on 
the inadvisability
of fielding pop-fly pianos and didn't even have to heal up 
afterwards. He lucked
out, big time! Education of any sort is enormously enhanced by 
massive infusions
of adrenalin, in my personal experience. The absence of broken 
bones and blood was just a lucky bonus. By
the time I arrived, they had both already passed the babbling 
panic stage, made
a relieved injury inventory, and passed into a state of goofy 
embarrassment. We
stood around making amusing  and pithy observations while they 
gradually wound down enough
to help me toss the carcass et al into my truck. I hauled the 
remains away for
odd hinges, brackets, lumber and screws (I SAID it was my 
first year).
Altogether, it was mostly a happy ending. I won (screw drawer 
seed), the guy in
the back won (he lived), and the piano won biggest of all (at 
least in the
flamboyance category). The only loser was the owner of the now 
damaged pickup
and piano kit. Fortunately, he was lucid enough to be grateful 
that no one was
squashed, so the rest of the disaster was a cinch.

Pianos aren't always so flagrant about their attempts at 
flight. They will also
occasionally throw themselves off stages or platforms. This 
may be a final act
of despair at never getting a chance at an accompanied pickup 
ride, but could
just as easily be an enraged attempt to kill the drummer. It's 
been considered
by more than just the piano, you know.

In any case, piano psychology being somewhat of an inexact 
science, the final
score for the dive can be computed by multiplying the length 
and breadth of the
resulting debris field. The size and number of the recoverable 
pieces can also
be factored in if necessary in the event of a tie.

This covers most of the basic phenomena of whole piano 
ballistics, except for a
rather more notably distinguished episode of Northern Exposure 
in which a
piano was flung into the weeds with much ado and outstanding 
result. Maybe
next month we can further explore the subject in the interior 
of an otherwise
well behaved and stationary piano. There's a lot of stuff 
slinging around, and
it's not just because it's an election year.

Ron N