[pianotech] Nordiska 7' grand

[Paul McCloud]

Hi, Nick:
    Our store was the dealer for about 4 years.  They flew me out to their Chicago headquarters where they trained us for a week.  We saw presentations and slide shows of the Chinese factory, etc.  The Nordiska pianos were sold by Geneva International.  It was an effort to produce the finest Chinese piano, saving no expense.  They used good quality hammers, good sold spruce boards, some Renner actions and Kluge keysets.  Most did not have these.  They upgraded their models at some point, with metal tone collectors on the belly rail.  They used a lot of MDF, and some music desks sagged to the point where they scraped the stretcher.  But for the most part, they were pretty good.  
    One of the problems was that the keys were laminated.  They had many keysets that were always sluggish due to tight bushings.  Since they were laminated, using ordinary key easing pliers didn't do the job.  As hard as you could squeeze, the end grain of the ply wood would resist any dimensional change.  It would simply pop back out, sometimes after a little while.  Then I had to go out and again ease the keys.  I ended up modifying a pair of ViceGrips to do the job.  That seemed to work over the long haul.  
    The next problem was that the grand pianos were hard to wrestle into tune.  There is a large amount of friction between the tuning pin and the speaking length, with a thick piece of felt in between.  The very snug tuning pins reqired a lot of twisting before they moved in the block, and coupled with all the friction made them hard to tune.  On a certain model, I think a 165, there was a lot of interaction between tuning pins in the area of A4, so if you dialed in one string, others would go out of tune.  Using the pitch raise feature of my ETD would not work as usual, and if you tried to use it, you ended up chasing your tail back and forth trying to get it on pitch.  Since the Nordiska used the same plate and other belly features as other brands made in the same factory, they all shared this tuning challenge.  I won't name any of the models, but if you're familiar with the Dongbei factory, you know which ones I mean.  I only mention the Nordiska here because they're no longer in production.  
    They had their problems with tight action centers, but then what Chinese or Asian piano doesn't have that problem too.  In a very dry climate, you shouldn't have too many problems.  Being in San Diego, where the ocean air can affect pianos up to 10 miles inland, I had to contend with humidity related problems.  
    If I were to inspect one of these 7 foot models, I'd check for sluggish action problems first of all.  They'll have a slow close fallboard mechanism, so check that.  They are made with plenty of downbearing, especially in the treble, so you should have no problems there.  Really, I thought they were overall pretty good, other than I mentioned above.  The tone was good, and once you wore your arm out tuning it, it pretty much stayed put.  In a church situation, you never have very good climate control, so of course that will be a factor in stabilizing the tuning.  I'd even go out on a limb and say if they got a steal of a deal on a 7 footer, tell them to go for it.  They might be pleasantly surprised.
    My $.02
    Paul McCloud
    San Diego


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Nicholas Gravagne 
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: 09/15/2010 2:35:45 PM 
Subject: [pianotech] Nordiska 7' grand


Hello List,

A church has an opportunity to purchase a four year-old 7' Nordiska at a very attractive clearance-sale price. I have never worked on one of these pianos. Assuming it checks out on the basics, who likes them out there; who doesn't; and why?

Church sanctuary holds 500 folks max. No drums, no flame throwing PA EQ, meaning that services are fairly quiet and conservative. I know the pianists; they are not bangers but they do dig in as the music requires. This church does turn out an energetic choral piece on occasion. If chosen, the Nordiska will live in a non-dry area of mid Texas.

Thanks for your input!

-- 
Nick Gravagne, RPT
AST Mechanical Engineering
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