Piano Restoration - Bring back the beauty in those classic antique pianos!
Restoring a piano can bring a beautiful musical instrument back to life! Piano restoration has saved the lives of many precious antique pianos that have for one reason or another, not been taken care of properly.
A piano is one of the finest musical instruments a person can own, and pianos make some of the most loyal companions. It has even been said that the piano is "The world's most perfect musical instrument." Proper care of a piano should not be taken lightly and you should make sure to care for it as you would any other valuable work of art. That's what a piano is, a work of art. A piano can actually get better over the years, as long as they are taken care of properly.
Pianos are too often bought and loved, then gradually forgotten. They can become dusty and out of tune while sitting and waiting until someone comes along and decides they want to play the piano again several years later. But what kind of condition is the piano in now? It's probably out of tune, dirty and doesn't sound the same as it did before. Should you just throw the piano away? Of course not! You can, but there are better choices, like piano restoration.
Piano restoration can make any old piano come to life again and play just as well or better than it did before, producing wonderful sound. Imagine that beautiful old baby grand piano, all cleaned up and in tune, ready for someone to play great music again. A good piano technician can make an antique piano produce better sound than it ever did, even when the piano was brand new.
As with most other instruments, pianos have a limited lifespan. However, various parts on a piano also have different life spans, and this is one of the major reasons piano restoration can be so effective. For an example, on an instrument that has been heavily used over the course of its life, the hammers might be worn, but the soundboard might be fine and may function properly for several more decades.
Therefore, having a piano technician inspect your piano every 2 or 3 years and replace the worn parts can eliminate the need for more serious restoration later on. Although piano restoration is very beneficial in some cases, it should probably only be done on expensive pianos or on pianos with some sort of personal or sentimental value, because the piano restoration process can be relatively expensive depending on the amount of work that needs to be done to the piano.
Therein lies the cost of piano restoration. It's not easy work to restore a piano, and there can be a lot of time involved in rebuilding or restoring a badly damaged piano. For example, imagine a piano where some of the action parts such as the hammers, ribs and strings, are still in good working condition, but the body of the piano itself is worn down and cracked in some areas, and the bridges are about to go out.
A qualified piano restorer can rebuild and replace the parts that need it and tweak the parts that work well so they perform even better than before! A good thing to remember is that when a piano restorer or technician looks at your piano and says the word "repair", the cost won't be as much as if the technician mentions the words "restoration" or "rebuild." Restoration costs more than repair, and rebuild costs even more than restoration.
So while restoration can be an excellent idea if you truly love your piano and plan to keep it for many years, or if it valuable enough to justify the cost of piano restoration. Don't have your piano restored if you still plan to just let it sit in a room without being played. You would be better off selling the piano to someone who will have it rebuilt or even to a technician who will rebuild it with plans to resell it. You can use the money from selling your piano to go towards a newer one for yourself if you want to.