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Hours and hours working on this Hohner Clavinet

This is the underside of a clavinet. Over time the little orange tips (which sort of fret the strings) turn into a gooey, gum like texture. A pain to scoop out and put new ones in. You need patience and some inventive ways of digging out these little buggers!

Every now and again I stand back and look at the amount of work I have ahead of me. Today I did just that. Looks like Ill be here a while. May need a bigger shop.

Thats one rusty piano!

Rust rust and more rust! Please be careful when choosing a “free craigslist piano”. You get what you pay for folks. Hard to tell customers bad news and this piano was in horrible shape.

Be careful folks . . .

I feel really bad that these very nice customers have no idea that the “rebuilt piano” is without a doubt the worst job I have ever seen. It looks like an 8 year old did this work.I can not stress enough – have a piano tech evaluate the piano before buying it!

Hohner Pianet repair

This customers pianet suffered from a bad case of rust. The pitch was 40-50 cents flat on each reed. I had to scrape off a ton of rust and file the brass weight to get it back in shape. It took me a solid week but I got it and the customer was happy with …

A fun last minute tuning at MIT radio station WMBR

Got this last minute tuning for MIT’s radio station. For a 100 yo piano it plays and sounds pretty good. They use this for live performances. They don’t make them like this anymore!

Another example of a low end piano pretending not to be . . .

“Mezzo-Thermoneal Stabilzer” ha? I wonder if the salesman used this as a pitch back in the day?

Boston PhilHarmonic piano tuning

I was lucky enough to be asked to get this beautiful Steinway B back in shape for a performance.

Not as bad as it looks

Some days are better then others . . .

Today I tuned a brand new $80K+ Steinway O and then tuned a 9′ falcone grand.  The day before tired old spinets!