The Piano Saga, Episode 1: The Quest For The Ultimate Piano

Nick Young – Managing Director, Miloco Studios.

March 2016

I am no expert on pianos. I fully admit it. I can play a few notes on one, and I can hear when one sounds nice but certainly not like some others can. We rely on experts and clients to tell us about the pianos in our studios, and each time they do we listen to their feedback to try and improve what we have. So begins the tale of the Livingston piano saga…

In around 2012 Miloco took over Livingston Studios. The place was rundown and most of the gear was broken and needed work doing to it. We decided the console was so badly maintained that we had to get rid of it straight away and brought in a new one, and slowly but surely we did what Miloco does – fix things and make them better.

Amongst all this equipment came a Yamaha C5 grand piano (below). To my ears it sounded okay and some clients seemed to love it, but a lot of the Jazz heads said it was not a great piano and it had tuning issues. We decided to live with it for a while and off we went running Livingston and doing session after session.

Livingston Studio 1

In early 2015 we were offered a Bosendorfer grand as someone was moving and could not fit it in their new house. We offered to house the Bosendorfer and decided to move the Yamaha. However the Bosendorfer we realised was a bit smaller than the Yamaha and probably not fit for the job. This was verified when we had a Jazz pianist in who tried both the Yamaha and the Bosendorfer and decided she was not keen on both of them!

So began our quest for the ultimate piano.

Livingston 1 is a great tracking studio with five separate live rooms all connected with line of vision sight. It should be a natural choice for Jazz bands, and in short we want to make it the number one studio in London for Jazz bands (and of course any other type of band). For this to happen though we knew there is one last piece to the jigsaw: a top quality recording Piano. The question was how to do it on a limited budget?

We put the word out that we were looking for a piano and due to financial constraints probably an old one that we could refurbish. One of our piano tuners found an old 1890s Steinway (pictured below) so off we went to inspect the piano with the Jazz pianist. The piano was in a state! Not setup at all, needed restringing but still, the pianist liked the feel of it. She did of course point out that she did not know how the piano would end up sounding, and if we bought it it was a gamble. Our tuner was confident that we could make the piano sound great so we decided to buy it and our tuner took it away to restring and make it sound amazing.

Piano keys

A lot of work went into the piano and three months later we rushed it into the studio to try to get it in for a session that wanted to take it for a spin. Our jazz pianist came back in and tried it…instantly she did not like it! It had a nice bottom and top end but the middle of the register was not singing at all. The piano also kept going out of tune. Our tuners revisited over the next three weeks time and time again. We must have retuned the piano about 30 times but it just wouldn’t settle. We know pianos take a while to settle after a restring, but this was not right. Some days the piano would be out of tune within an hour of the tuner leaving the building. Finally our tuner admitted defeat and worked out that the problem was the soundboard. It had failed. This was a disaster!

Livingston

After much consulting he put us onto Paul Leverett form pianorestorations.com. He said he could change the soundboard but he would only do this if he could refurbish the whole piano, which was the only way he could guarantee it would sound great. After adding the cost of this to what we had already paid for it to be partly refurbished, we decided to let it go and our tuner (who was extremely helpful) took the piano off our hands and gave us our money back.

So, back to square one. We spoke to Paul more and decided that his restoration service sounded like the way to go. We headed up to Paul’s workshop to meet him and look at the work he does and were blown away. We entered what looked like a small factory and found what must have been 20 – 25 grand pianos in various states of repair. Paul took us around and talked about what he would do. The process basically involved replacing everything in the piano and setting it up from scratch. With this work done he assured us we would end up with an incredible sounding piano and that it would be every bit as a new piano coming out of the Steinway factory. Great! Now we just had to find a Steinway to restore…

In a matter of weeks Paul located one in the States, a 1955 Steinway B. Although it needed a lot of work doing to it the price was exceptional for a piano of this year. As we were going to be rebuilding the piano completely (except for the frame) it didn’t matter how it was inside. So we bought the piano and then waited patiently while lorries were sent to pick it up but turned away by floods (following the snow storms).

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Finally we got word that the piano was crated up on a plane! We now start the rebuilding process which Paul will update us on, step by step.

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In the meantime while we wait for the Steinway to be rebuilt we have had the Yamaha restrung. It’s now sounding great and holding its tuning well (but it’s no Steinway). Clients who have been using it have been loving it though – now the only thing to decide is whether there should be one or two grand pianos at Livingston!

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