The Denker Piano approach to pianos for sale:

The last person to buy a piano in my shop said “I went everywhere and tried many pianos but the minute I played yours I knew it was the one.” There’s a reason for that. When I finish restoring a piano I use it for my practicing for a whole year. “Putting it through its paces” breaks in all the new parts, especially the hammers. It takes that long for the new felt to meld to the strings, and the tone matures considerably. All the adjustments need to be changed and refined after the new parts get worked. And most importantly, I can sense that tweaking an adjustment will “open up” the piano’s possibilities. It may play better if the black keys are a little higher or lower. Perhaps the hammers need to be a little further away from the strings, or the top notes might sound better if the hammer strikes the string a fraction of an inch this way or that.

What makes a vintage grand piano so special?

The early nineteen hundreds was the golden age of piano manufacturing. Roughly 365,000 pianos were made in 1909 compared to just over 29,000 in 2021. They were all hand crafted, and the wood was the finest of the “old growth timber” which is now long gone.

Can they be restored?

Absolutely. Anything on a piano that wears out can be replaced. The original parts lasted a hundred years, and new ones another hundred. It’s speculated that the resins in the Sitka spruce soundboard harden through the decades creating a tone no new piano could have.