today I went to try out a 1974 Yamaha G2 piano. Everything is in very good order, from the cabinet to the soundboard, some strings are a little bit tight but only slightly. The piano has not been played for a year and a half until today. It has remained stationary and covered inside a premises in Ivrea... cold and humid almost certainly.
Unfortunately, the keyboard is the weak point. Almost 1/3 of the keys respond poorly, the return is unresponsive or extremely slow.
the owner of the premises didn't know, he doesn't play and hasn't even tried it
He offered to call a technician, get a quote, and deduct the amount from the initial asking price. Now... is the problem serious and therefore expensive? What is it about? If it were the unit (unidit), wouldn't there be a problem across the whole keyboard? How much can it cost to redo all the keys?
It certainly depends on the mechanical pins. Humidity creates this problem. It is necessary to disassemble both the hammers and the repetitions and enlarge the fork pins, slightly reaming the holes lined with کشمیر (Cashmere). It is delicate work and one must have special reamers that are NOT CONICAL but STRAIGHT, which taper the holes by a hundredth or two, enough to change the pin. If there is rust from humidity, it has taken quite a bit! The work can give new life to the instrument, but if done poorly, it can definitively ruin the hole linings. It is necessary to have an experienced technician intervene!
P.S. To the naked eye, the problem may also appear partial, but the work must be performed on ALL pins to achieve uniformity of friction (3-6 gr for the hammer forks and 4-9 gr for the repetition forks. The escapement uprights, once freed from the spring, must fall gently under their own weight) ATTENTION: do not use lubricants that could worsen the problem.
The cost depends on the type of work and every technician knows how to evaluate the time necessary for the intervention
Thank you very much for your kind reply, I am very undecided.. when the piano owner saw the problem, he said that he wants to give it to me in good working order and therefore is having it repaired.
Or he will deduct the cost of the repair from the asking price.
Can you tell me approximately the cost of a similar repair? Would you buy a piano in that condition? I mean, you go to try it and immediately notice this major friction problem..
Forgive me if I am pedantic, but it is a purchase that involves the expenditure of no small amount of money.
It takes a skilled technician who knows how to competently replace the center pins. If the shop has them, then OK. It takes experience to do this job and make the action "come back to life." The mechanical parts called repetitions have a pin calibrated to a hundredth of a millimeter. When excessive humidity affects the wood, the cashmere-lined holes that house these pins tighten, and all these actual "joints" of the action lose their smoothness. The final result at the keyboard is stiffness and poor key response to the pianist's touch. It is not enough to replace the pins; one must intervene by boring, with special NON-CONICAL reamers, the holes that will house new, oversized pins. This rectification phase is delicate because one must achieve a friction of around 5-7 g without the parts "wobbling" during the stresses they must endure. Otherwise, you do nothing but shorten the life of the action. I cannot quantify the cost at this stage, because the technician must see the instrument. One concern is that these conditions of the action indicate that the piano has been in a humid place for a long time. And the strings? Is there rust? Are the hammers good? Etc....
Thanks for the answer ? I preferred to give up, but on Saturday I'll drive some more kilometers to go and see a YAMAHA, this time the C3, my true love!
I hope everything goes well and I don't have to discover any more surprises. I no longer feel like dealing with private sellers. If it doesn't work out with him, I'll go to a shop... people who don't know the history of the instrument they are selling, people who trivialize the problem, people who sell an object and are not musicians... well, excuse my outburst but I am appalled.
