If you bought it used, make sure it's all working 100% before you change anything. Find somebody with a tube tester, test the tubes. Use an ESR meter to check that the caps are good.
Etc. Probably wouldn't cost much to have a good tech give it the once-over.
Search found 3992 matches
- Mon Apr 29, 2024 6:35 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: The Pro Jr.
- Replies: 8
- Views: 220
- Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:18 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: Hotel Earth studio 1 build diary
- Replies: 28
- Views: 1671
Re: Hotel Earth studio 1 build diary
Something I was looking at a couple years ago was a "duct booster fan", which is a fan designed to be mounted in the middle of a round air duct. Some models have quite low noise specs, and can be used with soft flex duct to really decouple the vibration.
- Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:14 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: Mixing with Hardware - Hybrid
- Replies: 20
- Views: 1240
- Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:11 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
One of the more interesting areas in working on old pianos is voicing. Over time the parts can stiffen up, but there are great modern lubricants designed specifically for pianos - Protek CLP is kind of the standard, the WD-40 of the piano world. Oddly enough you don't want to go too crazy with this ...
- Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:00 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
So yeah, free pianos. Easy to find, not so easy to move. Here in the Chicago suburbs it cost $275 to have the current piano moved from one house a half hour away to my house, 2-3 steps at each end. So that's the first expense, though if you've got access to a van, a ramp, and a few friends you may w...
- Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:49 am
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
Earlier I mentioned the "previous" piano. The current piano is a 1967 Cable, another upright but tall enough to have a proper action, not a dropped action. The Wurlitzer had the kind of action that is dropped several inches to allow for a smaller case, and as a result has the connection to the keys ...
- Fri Apr 26, 2024 5:50 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
I still keep expecting your first post to start out with "...but I play one on TV." Ahh, so I'm not the only one. Was tempted to make some videos, but probably won't. At this point maybe it would be good if somebody did that whole ultra-long "back from the dead" type of rebuild series, and there is...
- Fri Apr 26, 2024 5:47 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: Mixing with Hardware - Hybrid
- Replies: 20
- Views: 1240
Re: Mixing with Hardware - Hybrid
I'm a weirdo and should probably just be doing classical recording, because I like everything as clean as possible. When I got my first decent digital converter it was great, finally things just came out the same way they came in. That being said my own vocals now always go through a transformer pre...
- Thu Apr 25, 2024 5:30 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
I would add that after spending an hour plus tuning, I walk away with extremely fine pitch perception for a little while afterwards. Or so it seems, anyway.
- Thu Apr 25, 2024 5:29 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
So I've always heard about the idea of "stretch tuning," which I understand to be something along the line of, "once you make it out of the middle, ignore the tuner and train/ trust your ears, as harmonic truth and perfect equal temperament are both false trails." True? Or have I misunderstood? It'...
- Thu Apr 25, 2024 5:26 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: The bottom of the snare
- Replies: 53
- Views: 6096
Re: The bottom of the snare
Just flip the snare over, and you have everything covered! Easy peasy.
- Wed Apr 24, 2024 7:30 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
Would a modern tuner with a mic help with that? I think a fair number of modern tuners would be mostly OK, though really you want something that's rather high resolution. Real professional piano tuning software goes in the the hundreds of dollars! I wish the guy behind the AP Tuner app was still pr...
- Wed Apr 24, 2024 5:59 am
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
I should mention that while you don't need golden ears to tune a piano, you do still need to be a bit of a weirdo to get through the whole thing. That top octave is a *very* tough neighborhood. And if you've got a professional technician coming in to tune your higher quality piano... definitely keep...
- Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:55 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
So the piano I started with was a 1973 Wurlitzer spinet. Not a great piano by any standard, and as a spinet it had the added bonus of being hard to work on. I did get it to where it sounded pretty good in the midrange (where all the money is anyway), and it stayed in tune pretty well too. But it had...
- Tue Apr 23, 2024 5:14 pm
- Forum: Creative Recording
- Topic: I'm not a piano technician
- Replies: 19
- Views: 681
Re: I'm not a piano technician
Sources - youtube, of course. Also books, I have the venerable book by Arthur Reblitz about repairing and tuning pianos, also Mario Igrec's much more recent "Pianos Inside Out". And of course old-fashioned message boards, like the Piano Tuner's Guild websit http://www.ptg.org which has a great forum...