At your own risk.
Pleyel pianos, made in France, are some on the finest pianos on the planet.
Pleyel pianos sound fantastic, and the sound, so beautiful and sweet can inspire composing by just playing.
It may sound funny and it is but usually we do not show to the musical instruments. They show to us.
Chopin was a brilliant user of Pleyel pianos or the other way round!
The particular upright Pleyel model 9 sounds fantastic and sweet. The tuning pins bad to be changed and the down bearing force to the "table d' harmonie" restored by retightening the screws that hold the metal frame.
The original strings at that time were made by the Ferminy factory in France, no longer existing. They seem to have different properties from modern strings so it was not a good idea to just change with a modern string of the same diameter. It might have changed all the scaling that gives correct to ear harmonic production. Our ear needs slightly more than x2 in frequency harmonics to perceive a satisfactory octave. This is how our brain works.
It was so confusing to find out what to do. After long time of reflection and contrary to the suggestion of all it was decided to keep the same fantastic sounding strings, cleaning them and polishing them, so that they can be again as new.
It proved an exercise of patience and it took about 3 years.
Ten years have passed and the piano still sounds fantastic and better than it was before the operation started. The piano proved stable enough to be able to be tuned at A4 much higher than 440Hz. This is another reason why it sounds so nice with a sound close to Steinway with the sweetness and sustain of a Pleyel piano. Increasing the tension to the strings up to a point increases progressively slightly the frequency of each overtone (what is usually called harmonic) compared to the fundamental as explained above so that they sound correct to ear brain. This slight increase is not to be taken lightly. Exact x2 in frequency sounds a very boring, unnatural and out of tune octave. Bach said that God is in the details.
After many tunings a value close to A 447Hz? may be found optimum. Increasing too much, the (double octaves + 3rds) get too beaty.
Is this what was used in 1921?
Each string was cleaned with Wenol metal polish.
Then after a phone call to the excellent German Roslau factory the lubricant for polishing to use was Fuchs Renolin D10. It cannot be overemphasized how this information given by them is appreciated. So every string was processed 3 times by Wenol and then say 3 times by Fuchs. Rubbing was with soft tissue toilet paper and wearing gloves of course. It pays to pay attention to every safety detail including glasses and earplugs when hammering tuning pins etc. The production output was 1 string per day?!
After a phone call to the Pleyel factory in France it was asked whether a piano maker still exists who had been at the factory around 1921. After some effort Monsieur Jean Lovy was contacted. And he was the most kind soul, sending over by mail all kind of relevant information and guiding the project.
Everything has to be done slowly at all stages to minimise mistakes. Such as life. It proved very difficult having a piano in parts for 3 years. Adding the fact that one cannot play except by imagination. Everything had to covered to avoid dust etc.
The joy is in playing.
Much knowledge had been gained in the past by watching the piano technician and tuner Albert Ketenzian at work.
And a book extremely helpful helped everything falling back to place.
Reference:
Piano Servicing Tuning and Rebuilding - Reblitz
Other euroelectron posts and references on the perception of correct octaves on our mind
Musical Acoustics - Donald Hall
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