A piano tipped on its back! All of the keys fell off and had to be repositioned. They handed me a box of parts and said, "here you go." I made a plan to maximize my time and saved them hundreds of dollars. Other professionals quoted $500; they paid less than half of that.
1. The black and white keys were sorted according to their letter names and angles.
2. The sharps were put in first, then the B's and E's, etc.
3.The broken parts (elbows) were replaced and correctly installed.
4. At the end, the customer had a working and beautifully tuned piano. 
Keytop Replacement:


A customer requested all new keytops on his piano. 


The old sharps were faded and the ivories were broken and chipped.

After removing the old tops, I sanded down the keys and attached and shaped new ones. It took several hours, but it is so exciting to see it finished (picture shown below - pictures used by permission of owner - American Fork)


The piano is located in American Fork.

Does your piano sound this off??? Maybe it might sound better to get it tuned up.  Thanks for watching this beautiful rendition of Clair de Lune.  I think Debussy would cry, though he was actually still alive when this piano still hadn't been tuned!


I was in south Utah County and there was a piano which dated from the 1800's.  Someone had restored an old Steinway Grand, and it had the signature of one of the Steinways' on the plate (Henry Z. Steinway, which is his great-grandson). 

Being a piano player, I was incredibly excited! (Picture used by permission).

The 100 year old piano project

This is the start of doing some work on an old grand piano, by Wm. Knabe and Co. (5' 6").  When I received it, it had a ton of scratches, paint missing from the plate, it ended up having at least one broken string, the piano had dirt inside, worn ivory keys, and pinblock problems.


After a lot of work, it currently looks like the pictures to the right.

I want to regulate, repair, and tune the piano next.  I have also thought about putting all new strings onto the piano.

It was a great opportunity to tune two pianos which 


were side by side.  The family had purchased two of 


them so they could play duets together. 



One of them required a pitchraise, but both needed 


to be tuned.  It took several hours but it was so much


fun.



(Highland, UT, picture of house used by permission 


of owner)

Someone purchased a Steinway grand piano which needed to be tuned.  When I saw the plate, it had two signatures on it. 

One was the famous Armenian composer, Arno Babachanian.  Next to his signature was another musician which looked like Myra Hess, a famous pianist in the 20th century.
There are a slew of piano videos and tutorials on YouTube.  The ones below are simple introductory videos about pianos and include information on pitchraises, sticky keys, and string repair.  Used by permission of the owner, Steve Howard, from howardpianoindustries.com. More videos on the are on the way!

Click here to edit text

Pitch Raise Techniques

Sticky Keys

Often I run into pianos that needs to be cleaned out.  It helps tremendously with stopping keys from sticking, helping the touch of the piano (grime diminishes the capability and power), cleans away dust and also sometimes there are interesting finds.


Some of the most interesting finds I have seen are:

-A $50 bill

-A valuable antique from the 1800's

-Rat's nest

-Family pictures that are decades old

- An entire deck of cards

-Playdough between the keys and the like


String Replacement

This is an 8 out of 10 on the need for cleaning.