Within about a year or so of the death of the player piano market with the retirement of the most famous player piano man of them all, Dick Carty, there were only two people left doing player piano work in Los Angeles, myself and a person whose name rhymes with Scary Quadbore. His partner, Tom Rose, moved out of the state and went into another line of work.
Then the lack of interest by the public in player pianos drove Mark Erday out of business to find work at the DMV. Then two of them died, Jimmy Dixon and Aaron Alison. Within a very short time there were only a few people left who rebuilt or repaired player pianos. Almost overnight in May of that year the player piano market died. At least that’s how we see it.In 1990 there were about twenty people in the greater Los Angeles area who serviced and rebuilt player pianos. At the end of the day, you are the one that is going to be using the piano and therefore the piano should sound like you need it to sound. If you want to play an active role in the tuning procedure we are going to welcome you to do so. There are people that are certainly very particular about the time of care that they want to see their pianos get. When we are asked to tune or fix a piano in any way we do want to go over some of the different possibilities with folks to ensure that they are truly going to be able to benefit from our services. For example, if you are looking to have a piano repaired to then go ahead and sell it, but the cost of the repair is going to leave you little to no profit margin on the deal then it certainly doesn’t make sense. There are also pianos that maybe could be repaired, but it may not make sense to repair them. Of course, there are pianos that could be beyond repair. Yes, there are times where restringing can come into play as well. If you really want to give the piano a good chance to get back up and running tuning is going to be part of the process. This is certainly something to think about. If it’s been years there is a good chance that if we try to tune the piano there are going to be some broken strings in the process at the very least. When some folks read about the yearly tuning they quickly think about the last time that they had the piano tuned. When Was The Last Time That The Piano Was Tuned? For the most part, though yearly tuning is the widely accepted recommendation. At the same time, the room that the piano is in could actually contribute to it falling out of tune. That can come either because of the piano itself or because of the type of usage that you give the instrument. Different pianos could have an altered timeline. This is something that you should be looking into at least on a yearly basis. How Often Should You Be Looking Into Tuning? Just in case you ever want or need to sell it. Keeping it properly tuned is going to allow the piano to retain a lot of its value. Yet, it’s a good idea to keep a piano properly tuned even if it’s just for show in your home. We respect that, and we can also help them keep those pianos looking amazing. There are certainly at least a couple of folks that have their pianos purely for show. We feel that if you are going to have a piano it’s a good idea to make sure it works.