1800's John Broadwood grand

[Dave Doremus]

On 4/19/07, Dave McKibben quoth:

>
>What is the general perception of an 1800's era John Broadwood grand 
>piano with respect to rebuilding and value??


My thoughts, which may not be everyone's (i.e. flame suit on :-0). 
These pianos do not have a lot of intrinsic value unless they are 
very early. Most of what you will find are late 19th century and do 
not vary a lot from piano to piano. I have restored, not rebuilt, a 
number of these. You will need to plug the pinblock and redrill for 
the smallest tuning pins you can get, 1/0 or less. See what Jurgen 
Goering has. Otherwise you can run into problems at the struts. They 
do not play or sound like modern pianos, and should not be expected 
to. Except for one at Strathmore Hall in Bethesda, MD all the 
Broadwoods I have worked on are in private homes where they are 
expected to stay in tune, if not at pitch, and perform at the 
occasional party or family gathering. They are more valued for 
appearance and age then for performance. This does not mean they 
should be disrespected as instruments. For the time they were quite 
successful, if different from what we expect from a piano. If you are 
going to work on one, start with the goal of keeping to its design 
and you cant go too far wrong. The action is more like an upright 
than a modern grand and will take some feeling your way through, the 
dip should be shallow, the aftertouch almost non existent, lost 
motion as small as possible. Dampers are borderline at best, do not 
try to redesign them, copy what's there. For my money, and the 
British technicians with more experience may disagree, the Collards 
and Kirkmans were better instruments, but the Broadwoods must have 
been more popular judging by the numbers that survive. I hope this 
helps a bit.
-- 
----Dave


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Dave Doremus, RPT
New Orleans
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