1925 Steinway Model L

1. Dust your piano regularly. Nothing will preserve your piano’s beauty more than the use of a simple hand duster.
2. Keep the piano’s lid closed when you’re not using the piano. This will prevent dust from settling inside.
3. Place your piano away from windows and direct sunlight. Over time, sunlight will fade the finish.
4. Place your piano away from any heaters.  Again, a direct heat source reduces the longevity of your piano and causes it to go out of tune prematurely.
5. If the keys get dirty, clean them with a damp cloth, wiping them quickly. Never apply any liquid directly to the keys. Just moisten the cloth with water.
6. When entertaining guests, keep the piano lid open to prevent people from putting things on it. Warm or damp dishes can easily leave rings that are removable only by refinishing.
7. Keep the humidity between forty and fifty percent in the piano’s room. Nothing will make a piano go out of tune faster than the fluctuation of humidity.
8. Tune your piano regularly. Ideally, twice a year. When you turn the heat on and then off for the season, the piano will lose its tune. This is a good time to schedule your regular tunings. Tuning is particularly needed with newly restored pianos since these will have a “settling-in” period.
9. Be careful what items you place on your piano, and particularly avoid plants. You could use an attractive fabric as a cover or runner between these objects and the piano. But really, shouldn’t your piano be seen rather than covered? Besides, stuff on the lid will discourage you from opening it, and the piano sounds best when the lid is open.
10. Even with great care, age will inevitably show on a piano. If your piano looks worn or sounds tired give us a call. We love these pianos, and we’re happy toconsult with you on restoring your piano’s potential.

So when our friends at the street design studio Arterial asked us to contribute to their PARKing Day event in Montclair, NJ, we were ready with a 1902 Steinway Model B.

PARKing Day is an international event based around building small temporary parks within parking spaces to demonstrate the possibility of reclaiming and “rehumanizing” urban spaces. There are some surprising ways to convert a parking spot or two in to a public park.

Have a look at the space Arterial designed around our Steinway:

You should have a look at the article on the Arterial Blog. You can also browse more photos from the PARKing Day event, or look at the PARKing Day videos.

Yesterday on our Twitter, we linked to an article on Steinway Pianos as a spectacular investment. But, after a little more of my own digging today, the source material on Steinways as an investment is remarkably outdated.

Bloomberg business week spelled out the advantage of buying Steinway pianos over other brands very well.

Of course, Steinway insists its pianos are wholly worth the steep cost. The meticulous manufacturing process creates both impossibly perfect instruments and a scarcity (4,000 made per year) that drive up prices. So if you pass on a Steinway for its sound quality and aesthetic beauty, you may want to consider one for its investment value. If you bought a 9-foot concert grand Steinway in 1975 for $25,000, for instance, it would sell for more than $100,000 today, says Leo Spellman, senior director of communications at Steinway & Sons. The very oldest Steinways command as much as 13 times their original price, and many are still in good condition—the durability of the instruments makes them very hard to damage.

But, an even surer investment than New Steinway pianos are used ones. It’s an obvious fact that a Grand purchased for $35,000 in 2000 would probably not reach a greater value in 2010. But, after reviewing our own records and gathering information from some other companies in our field, if someone was to buy a Steinway for $30,000 in 2000, it could easily be worth $40,000 today. We sold fully restored Steinway Grand pianos in 1995 for between $15,000 – $20,000 and our average sales today are $35,000 – $40,000. The real strength of Steinways as an investment is in used or restored pianos.

Since the re-design of our website we have had very little information about player systems available, the old page is still up. But, we researching some changes for this page already. For a few years we’ve been selling another system, additional to the QRS, called the PianoDisc system. So, more information about that will be up.

We also have a new system available called the Live Performance LX. This system is only two years old and has come rated incredibly high, here are some of the details:

PROPORTIONAL PEDALING. The new LX uses full proportional pedaling. With 256 pedal positions, 100 pedal samples/second, and high-bandwidth closed-loop control, the dampers are raised to their full height and their motion is closely controlled at every instant in time. This reproduces the subtlest and most delicate of pedal effects. Other playing mechanisms use simple “on-off” pedaling, which destroys the pedal shadings that make fine piano playing so satisfying. HIGH RESOLUTION. The new LX has 1020 dynamic levels for each note with a keyboard samples rate of 800 samples per second, standards that emerged after many years of experimentation and study. These standards, combined with high-resolution control of the note solenoids, yield a degree of articulation and subtlety beyond the reach of other mechanisms.

It’s amazing how far player systems have come.

What we’re really interested in seeing is where they will go from here though, there are so many questions in the player piano niche. With the rapid growth of technology, this field will be constantly changing. What is HD sound going to do to the field? Is further integrations with home stereo systems on the horizon? We are excited to see and stay as up-to-date as we can.

Look at the size of it!

We are in the process of completely restoring it, but, you can already feel it’s unmatched power when you sit to play it. Playing a Model D feels like steering a Battleship when all you drive is a golf cart. The power in the bass is unmatched in pianos.

Here’s the link to it’s listing in our inventory. Feel free to call and ask us about it, and, when we finish it we are absolutely going to have it in our showroom. Battleship guns blazing.

This is probably the number one question we get in our initial conversation with people who want to restore their piano or buy a restored piano from us. There seems to be an idea that since pianos are so heavy, large, valuable, and in some cases very ornate, we are only able to service individuals in our immediate area. Last year, we did almost 70% of our business out of state! Take a look at this map:

The first piano on our inventory page, Ebony 1941 Steinway Model S, has the video and new page layout installed. Check it out here!

Let us know what you think about these new videos! Are there any of our pianos you particularly want to see filmed? Any other tips for us?

Take a look at this model, (and select #2 Keybad & Action).

25 parts are listed there, and that’s not even the whole thing! Such an impressively small and precise machine.

When we restore a piano, the first thing we advise is proper action regulation. What that means is 12 individual measurements on each machine to ensure that the hammer strikes the string as precisely and accurately as possible. 12 multiplied by the 88 separate keys is 1,056 measurements!

1,056!

Want to know the longest time an Organ has ever been played continuously? There’s a World Record for that.

Want to know what the Largest Piano Ensemble ever was? Well, there’s a World Record for that too.

We’re just hoping Guinness is keeping track of Most Piano’s Ever Restored by One Company. Because, that is probably the only way we would be getting in.

Take a look at the "Target" on the note rack!

We are in the middle of finishing this really unique Circassian Walnut Knabe.  The graining on it is fantastic and we think the loop in the center of the note rack looks like a target.  I’m going to put up a few more pictures of this piano and here are the details from the inventory.