I just moved my late Grandmother's baby grand into the bat cave. She was a deaf teacher & this was the one nice thing she ever bought herself. She left it to me, my brother & my cousin. It's been in storage for ~5 years, but prior to that it was played often & tuned annually. Her tuner apparently thought it was pretty good. We decided to sell it (no one has space to keep it) & to keep this thread on topic, I will put my share towards a bicycle tour somewhere (she would be happy about this). The piano tuner comes in a month because he thinks it should 'settle'.

I love music & i grew up in her house admiring it, but i can't play an instrument & I've got no clue about this lovely old thing. Can anyone help me out here? The serial number isn't random like bicycles & dates it as 1961 but aside from that, i haven't got a clue.

Thanks

It's getting really hard to move an old piano these days. Definitely a buyers market in most towns.

The local piano tuner/teacher who came by to tune our Cabinet Grand (basically just a really huge upright) waxed poetic about what a lovely, full-voiced instrument it is, and how beautifully preserved it is for a 105-year-old piano. When I asked him how he'd price it if it was in his shop, he said around $800. That's retail.

I'm qualifying my statement by saying that I know jack-squat about pianos, but...it might be easier to sell this to a school or college than it would to a private buyer.

I surely couldn't afford a new one. The market in New Zealand might be tough though. It would seem a piano of that caliber would appeal to a specific class of person.

Don't worry, i'm not setting myself up for disappointment here. It's worth what it's worth, i'm just really curious about this thing. I'll be happy to be able to sit on the deck for a few weeks and listen to my freind play it.

I was a piano mover for 25 years. Both Grotrian and Steinway are respected names, but I have never seen them together on one instrument. It is undoubtedly German, date is probably from the 'fifties. That's the real deal, don't give it away cheap.

Just because I can, here is a piano moving photo from my archive.

The market for used pianos is worse than terrible. Unfortunately, low-to-mid level pianos degrade with time, unlike good violins or 'cellos.

I have my grandmother's Apollo (Ralph Wurlitzer's discount brand) 5-foot grand from about 1930, and I may just have to scrap it at this point, even though my mother and I both learned on it, and it was my grandparents' first piece of furniture. Yours is in much better condition and looks like it was a better instrument in the first place. The big test is whether it can hold tune (mine no longer can) and the condition of the action, hammers, and strings. (I have had to replace several strings, and the keys no longer work freely.)

I grew up with an old piano in the house and it was a "Grotian Steinweg" upright with very elaborate, beautiful carved woodwork with all sorts of rosewood and burl panels and inlays on it and two bronze candelabras mounted on it's front panel. My grandfather bought it for his house in the 20's and my dad inherited it from him after he died.
The "Steinweg" name on it confused a lot of people, causing them to assume it was a "Steinway". It turns out that they were competitors in the high end German piano market.. But I always found the "Grotian Steinweg" name more impressive sounding than "Steinway" because you just don't see or hear too much about them.
It's really neat to see the unusual piano's name again..... Thanks for posting your piano on the forum!

You moved it into your batcave? BIG MISTAKE.

That piano may or may not be any good as an instrument....one thing for certain however...Taking it and leaving it into a non-climate controlled garage is how, if it was any good in the first place, you kill a good piano. Putting it out there will wreck the hammers, the soundboard, you name it. Get in touch with local musicians who-know-someone-who-knows-someone-who-knows-someone to have a good player take a look at it. Pianos are ultra-fussy about climate and humidity does a number to them.


After being in storage for 5 years in god knows where and then in your garage, it might need a ton of work (read $$$-$$$$) to be really up to snuff again.

Wurlitzer is at the other end of the spectrum from the German companies Grotrian and Steinway, which are on the same level as Bechstein, Bosendorfer and Mason-Hamlin. The OP has a keeper. If the sound board is not cracked, no matter what else might be worn, it is worth repairing, even if the pin block no longer holds tune. You can replace the pin block if necessary, but I would bet that on this instrument it is fine.

Steinways are made in New York and in Hamburg, Germany. This is undoubtedly from Germany, which makes it more desirable than the New York Steinway.

If it was my piano, I would consign it to a dealer who has a repair shop where it can be brought to spec. The dealer will take a big cut of the profit, but it will be in the hands of someone who knows the value and who knows how to sell a piano. The dealer will also have the means to move it to the shop.

Paraphrasing Crocodile Dundee, your five foot Wurlitzer is not a piano. THIS is a piano!

Thank you very much for confirming what I had suspected, Repack Rider. It is cool that folks in this forum have such wide-ranging interest, expertise, and experience, on a variety of subjects.

Years ago I talked to a piano tuner about restoring mine, and he said I could throw a lot of hours or a lot of money at the project and still have just a "Ford or Chevy class" piano.

I'd kind of like one for my kids to learn on (I did as a kid - we only have room for an upright). It's looking around here that the costs of moving one (and/or tuning it) are more than the costs of a used upright piano on craigslist or the like.

Two good relevant comments above [MENTION=49196]Repack Rider[/MENTION] and [MENTION=388729]Marcus_Ti[/MENTION]. Piano's require regular TLC including tuning every 6 months. Even then, they may need to be "regulated" after 20 years or so. Then they need to be broken in to return to their former glory. Humidity control is the most important variable to maintaining the value through sound. The wood is simply furniture. Nice wood does not a good piano make.

My wife has a 6ft Yamaha C-3 conservatory grand from 1978 that sounds great after all these years. Like bikes, they are all a bit different, even within a model run. its been tuned every 6 months from the first day. Tuning took very little time because it held so well between tunings, so the variation of tuning was small. It is important to keep the tension of all those strings close to audible spec. to ensure the rest of the supporting hardware keeps its "set".

Prior to the C-3 she had a cheep spinet, it worked for a year or so then became a POS, impossible to keep in tune for more than a couple of days. Poor maintenance was the biggest factor. Quality of design and parts was the next.

It used to be part of the allure of keyboard instruments.

Back in the Good Old Days only the lord/ladies who weren't covered in sh*t could ever dream of affording a keyboard instrument, which were the successors to the lute and theorbo in the basso continuo department. And if you were a bored noble one way you passed your hours while the peasants broke their backs for you was music....and one of the supreme problems with keyboards was how to tune them in such a way that they sounded good given the specific piece. You literally were retuning your keyboard for every piece....as with any tuning system you end up with some really good harmonies and some really crunchy ones...frequently the best you could hope for was tonic and dominant key centers to be in tune and the rest was a crapshoot....IOW, you only had 2 good keys (plus their major and minor) that sounded pretty good out of 24....then some idiot came along and promoted Equal Temperament (around the time that Louis and Marie were relieved of their heads), and harmony and people's ears have been ruined ever since-because ET makes everything a little or a lot out of tune to salvage all 12 keys.

Fun fact...equal temperament has been around for a few centuries...but was not common practice used by professionals even into the 20th century. Sure people *said* they used it, but they didn't actually do so...the best concert hall piano techs in the world were using 1/4 mean-tone up until around the advent of the oscilloscope.

Thanks for the replies & the cool photos all

I'd love to keep it but I don't have the means & I'm maybe 15 years off having 5 year olds to force to play it.

The piano movers were impressive in action. Very nice guys & I'm jealous of them having another language to banter in (Tongan). That sure must make working in other people's spaces easier.

It's spent most of the 5 years disassembled, wrapped & in a non-temp or humidity controlled interior unit of a large storage facility. I had been thinking this long time would be when any damage would be done, and the 6 months tops in my garage wouldn't be as significant. The garage is pretty clean, and the climate here doesn't get that cold (last night was brutal for native Aucklanders but i still got a few hours riding in after the streets cleared of cars), nor will it get that hot until January. I will ask the tuner what he thinks about a dehumidifier when i talk to him today. It's sad if it's been damaged, but it's also reassuring to hear this is a keeper so even if it's damaged, we haven't scrapped a heirloom.

One of my best friends from High School is 2 years out of a Jazz degree from Auckland Uni, so he's pretty clued in. He said many guys could tune it well, but recommended the super expert who should be good help. He won't come until it 'settles' though. I'll know if it's a good player because my friend won't ever leave.

Don't know about it's value or anything but would love to play it. The sound of older pianos is nice.

That kind of time spent in the elements could have done a ton of damage to all the hardware....then again being in New Zealand, I presume you don't have the humidity swings we do in the USA and EU

Good piano tuners are be amazing. I work at a concert hall, and we lost our long time tuner 2 years ago-he could tune a Steinway 9D concert grand and have it stick and sound good in 90 minutes...Whereas some of the people we've had to contract out to over the years took 4 hours on the same exact keyboards to get the same results. Being in the elements, a piano tech will need to pull the action and look at it as well as the sound board before even worrying much about tuning. As with any instrument they need played to keep their tone.

Don't get me started on schlepping pianos...as someone who's had to do it-it ain't fun, even the baby grands. Especially where stairs are concerned. Odds are your Tongan workers were swearing more than a little bit

It's the same problem with selling a good pool table. You need to hire professionals to move it and set it up and they don't work cheap.

Yeah it's pricey.. I could have gone the van & mates route but i've got 0 interest in injuring myself because if i can't ride every day i get the blues. It was stored in a unit my mum was being financially drained for years by, and i put in a lot of work to disestablish it so i won't have to shoulder these costs alone.

You probably don't want a dehumidifier; you don't want it to get very dry. More important than that, avoid changes in humidity. Keep it away from sunny windows, doors, exterior walls, heat sources, etc.

This!

Pianos need consistent humidity. Our church has a decent grand and we use a humidity control unit that is both a humidifier and dehumidifier depending on the conditions. Too many swings n humidity and you can get a warped soundboard and then it is all over.

It's amazing what the climate can do to wood. I moved my mother's bedroom set from dry Southern California to damp Northern California. It has warped and split at the seams. You can hear it popping and cracking at night. I won't be passing it down to my daughter. It's a shame, they were beautiful old pieces.

Well, this thread has certainly wandered away from classic bicycles, but I have been enjoying it immensely, and I like reading the various war stories from the school of hard knocks and from professional experience. The common thread, of course, is what the elements can do to either a piano or a bicycle, although the latter are much more tolerant.

ok cool i don't have to buy a dehumidifier . Auckland's climate is constant humidity, it doesn't fluctuate much and the air is never dry (working outdoors in/ around Queenstown & Glenorchy (southern alps) where it does swing, made me realize this). I'll keep it in the center of the room where it is and hope for the best. There is one afternoon sun window behind it, which i'll cover. Aside from that it's got a white sheet covering it.

It's interesting what climate/ time alone can do to something. I suspect my Ken Evans had been barely ridden when i got it, as the 6400 group still had the clear stickers on the parts and the braking surfaces were barely worn, but old mother time and being moved around for 20 years had done a total number on it with many bits of rust on the frame and everything in dire need of a service.