A piano that has not been regularly tuned will lose its ability to stay tuned, turning it into a very large and heavy place to display sheet music, just like a car that never gets an oil change will eventually become an immobile scrap metal sculpture.
Shortly after we got married, my wife and I took possession of a 1918 upright piano that had not been tuned in a long time. We didn't know enough about pianos to know better, so we spent considerable time and effort to transport it 40 miles and up a short flight of stairs into our new home... only to dismantle it by hand less than a year later and slowly throw it away. It couldn't be tuned, and it took up too much room to keep if it wasn't going to be played. I think we sold the cast iron soundboard as scrap for a few dollars, and I did save some of the larger pieces of wood, which I used to build a bed for my two-year old son a few years later.
As a side note, if you've never taken apart a piano, I highly recommend it. You get a specific understanding of its inner workings, even if you think you already know how it functions.
> A piano that has not been regularly tuned will lose its ability to stay tuned
Having tuned pianos for about six years, I think this is a misconception. An piano left untuned for many years will certainly lose its ability to be retuned in a single tuning. Owners who try to bring it back into tune with a single tuning will fail, and think it can't be retuned. That's completely normal. What's more, retuning it correctly (evenly distributed tension) may be beyond the casual neighborhood tuner. But the absolute inability to be retuned is rare.
On the other hand, if the strings need replacing (sound dead, tinny, or thin, after as many as 50 years for good strings or as few as 10 for poor ones) or the tuning pins don't hold (long term lack of climate control), the piano probably needs restringing, which is labor and skill intensive and maybe not worth the time and money (from one to several grand) compared to purchasing a new piano (Costco has surprisingly good prices!) unless it has sentimental or collector value. But if you don't mind the expense, even with bad strings and tuning pins, the piano can be fixed and tuned.
Provided the tuning pins hold and the strings aren't ruined, a piano can generally be retuned in a patient series of 3 - 5 tuning sessions to gradually (with ample settling time between sessions) bring the whole (strings, soundboard, plate, bridges) back into well balanced tension.
It sounds to me like cfinke made a poor choice when acquiring a used instrument, then extrapolated that to 'all old instruments are bad/can't properly hold pitch'. (/exaggeration).
cfinke should've just gotten someone who knows about pianos to help him/her choose a good one, the way you might with a used car (although the choice is more subtle and less statistics-based).
As a counter example, I practice every day for hours on a baby grand piano from the 1930's which is very sturdy, with a beautiful tone. It was sitting unused (and untuned!) for decades in an old woman's house.
It was purchased for 1,000 euros at an auction, one of only two bidders.
I had it tuned by someone: it still sounded problematic, but good for practicing. I had a different tuner come and he made it sound incredibly good after a single tuning.
So the technician makes a huge difference too.
Piano restoration is fascinating, but engineers tend to underestimate how important trained hearing is in in order to improve the sound.
(rather than just being able to make a piano function properly on a mechanical level).
It sounds to me like cfinke made a poor choice when acquiring a used instrument then extrapolated that to 'all old instruments are bad/can't properly hold pitch'.
This information came to me via my father (a church musician, organist, and pianist for 40 years) and a number of piano tuners in the area that I talked to about getting the piano back in playing condition. I'm familiar with musical instruments and wouldn't claim that all old instruments are bad.
cfinke should've just gotten someone who knows about pianos to help him/her choose a good one
When we did eventually purchase a piano, we talked to the right people and made an informed decision. In the story I shared, the price (free) was more important than the condition.
My wife and I had a similar naive acquisition. After tuning, re-tuning, re-tuning in 24 hour periods we got close but I figured something about the age, possibly the method of transport compromised it's ability to hold a tune. Now what to do with this 400 pound object in our 6th story apartment...
Surprisingly about the same. As you see all the strings are out as well as the keys and hammers. All total probably shed about 25-35 pounds. I'd say it weighs 325-375 pounds total. Evidently most of the weight is in the metal frame.
I've taken apart a couple of discarded pianos. The saddest part is cutting the wires with a wire cutter (watch it, they whip outward) - the sound is so mournful and haunting.
Old pianos, or their parts, have been a part of foley for ages. Plenty of foley studios have parts of pianos lying around, for example, the piano harp.
Do you know the sound that the TARDIS makes when it materializes? Part of that sound is someone at the BBC radiophonic workshop scraping a wrench against the strings on a harp from a disassembled piano.
Can you explain what causes a piano that hasn't been tuned to lose the ability to stay tuned? It sounds interesting, and I can't quite figure out how that would work.
The tuning pegs might become stuck to the side of the pegboard holes they are in. Also, if the strings are not kept at the correct tension, there is a real possibility of the iron frame becoming warped or even breaking.
To add to the discussion... the location of a piano has a large impact on its ability to maintain its tune. For example, humidity plays a major role with impacting the soundboard, as well as all of the various wooden components of the piano. In general, a piano should be located in a consistently-maintained environment with regard to humidity and temperature, away from windows and direct sources of cold and heat (e.g., HVAC registers).
It usually doesn't. If the strings or pegs are worn out, those may need to be replaced, but from what I understand that's a fairly infrequent occurrence.
The strings are under a lot of tension, and if they're way out of tune simply cranking them a semitone back into tune won't do much. They won't stay put.
From the bit I've dealt with a piano tuner, they told that you're generally not supposed to tune it more than I believe it was about 4 cents each time (a semitone is 100 cents). It gives the strings and everything else a chance to adjust before tuning again. It's a similar idea to a guitar I think... If you just crank the tuning pegs around a few times it generally doesn't stay in tune very well. It needs to be a slow process.
If you've got an old, very out of tune piano it may take several tunings over a couple of years to bring it back into tune, but it should be do-able.
There's also humidity to take into account - you need to keep the humidity pretty constant while you do this or the wood will absorb/release water and change shape and bring the piano back out of tune.
It doesn't lose the ability to be tuned--the state of the piano merely drifts over time if it is not maintained--imagine your teeth drifting in your gums without a retainer, for example. If it spends 80 years warping a certain way, it will just take another 80 years of careful tuning to warp it back in a gentle, safe way. Most objects are not lucky enough to get 80 years of human attention after 80 years of inattention (stradivarius violins are a notable exception--these violins stay in tune just fine, despite being over 300 years old--they are nice enough that people have decided to keep tuning them).
I know nothing about pianos so I just want to clarify the metaphor of the car without an oil change.
I just rebuilt the engine in my truck. A neglected engine does not spell the end for a vehicle - but it seems to be that that is in fact the case for a neglected piano. Is that true?
A neglected engine does not spell the end for a vehicle - but it seems to be that that is in fact the case for a neglected piano.
Well, you could always disassemble the piano, replace the strings, tuning pegs, and possibly the soundboard, and put it back together, but what you really have is a new piano in an old case, much like if you completely rebuilt the mechanical parts of a car but kept the original body.
As a side note, if you've never taken apart a piano, I highly recommend it. You get a specific understanding of its inner workings, even if you think you already know how it functions.
It seems like those "negative value" pianos would be a good source for reclaimed wood for woodworking projects. I can see turning an old upright into a solid end table or something.
Shortly after we got married, my wife and I took possession of a 1918 upright piano that had not been tuned in a long time. We didn't know enough about pianos to know better, so we spent considerable time and effort to transport it 40 miles and up a short flight of stairs into our new home... only to dismantle it by hand less than a year later and slowly throw it away. It couldn't be tuned, and it took up too much room to keep if it wasn't going to be played. I think we sold the cast iron soundboard as scrap for a few dollars, and I did save some of the larger pieces of wood, which I used to build a bed for my two-year old son a few years later.
As a side note, if you've never taken apart a piano, I highly recommend it. You get a specific understanding of its inner workings, even if you think you already know how it functions.
Pictures of the piano disassembly:
With the keyboard removed: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2193/2299985304_d0b38313f6_b.j...
The keys that I saved for a long time but never found a use for: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2299984652_a024f4a05e_b.j... (They're like teeth that have been knocked out: much much longer than you'd expect.)
The soundboard exposed, and the huge screwdriver I had to buy (see the top of the photo) to remove the screws attaching it to the wooden back: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/2300002756_92e8503676_b.j...
The soundboard removed: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2217/2300002188_68c614d900_b.j...
Just a portion of the screws and other hardware holding it together: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2095/2299206761_ae640697d9_b.j...