This week I touched up the water marks on the new piano and bench, and tried to tune it with no lasting success for more than a day. It's still too moisture-saturated in the damper felts, wood action parts, and hammer felts to respond right to the touch and may take several months to fully dry out. In the meantime, it will require a lot of tuning to use at the very least. My fear is that I won't be able to bring it around by myself and will require a professional who may recommend far more restoration than I can justify. If that turns out to be the case, I may be the one advertising the "upright piano, $10, must pick up."
When I was searching the area in recent weeks for an instrument, I was warned about the many pianos that suffered severe storm damage from Wilma due to lost roofs and windows. But I didn't take it seriously till I got this one home and the extent of the damage from exposure to the elements for weeks or months became evident. I had thought a simple tuning would do the trick, but it has not. Not by a long shot--I've tuned it every day. Still, we've only had it in stable air for a week now. It's probably too soon to tell how it will play in, say, six weeks hence. I tend to be an eternal optimist, so I'll hope for the best.
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3 comments:
We got a little Baldwin Acrosonic about 15 years ago that we'd inherited from a relative of Pat's who lived in a very humid climate. That one certainly hadn't suffered hurricane damage, but it did take a long time to dry out, and until it did, it did require frequent tuning.
Our piano tuner's big worry was rust on the strings -- he was afraid they'd been so corroded they might break. But the rust turned out to be just on the surface, and gradually the piano stabilized in the desert climate.
So don't give up on your little Baldwin yet.
i hope you don't have to sell the piano
It sat in the moisture a long time... so give it time. Until then, use the keyboard!
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