Recently, I re-encountered an very old piano, which I sometimes used for teaching students at a school I was working as a peripatetic piano teacher. It was not a good standard piano for teaching, or even for a fun playing, so I, along with my students, used to avoid to play this old piano. At that time, I didn’t wondered or eve care what kind of piano it is. Probably no one did. Just a forgotten, uncared piano. (Unfortunately, this sort of piano exists at schools often…)

But when I recently visited the school for tuning pianos there, here it was, that old unwanted piano. I opened the panel, and saw the insede, I saw what I have never seen befre. It was a straight strung, overdamper piano. Why it’s so exciting? Because I realised it was ACTUALLY old, not pretending to be old due to a lack of care.

Modern day pianos are ‘overstrung’ (the strings are set angled, nearly diagonally to maximise the length, and at around the middle of a piano, crossing over), and dampers are set inside, under the hammers. Because, piano manufatctuers realised that this is far better, at some point during piano’s golden era (late 19th century to early 20th century).

No wonder, it is a not an enjoyable-to-play piano. Even my studens were complaining about it. But my point here is that every piano is so different, like people. Even if a good brand makes in a good method, one particular piano may not be a nice one. Or vice versa. In this case, this piano was not built nicely we think in modern time, but at that time when it was built, this may have been a good one among many built by the manufacturer. That’s why this is still here? This piano may have been loved at some point during its around 100 years of life. So why not now? Although these old pianos, especially straight strung & overdamper pianos, are not valuebale anymore. But it has a historical value at least, I Hope.

This particular old piano was made by a brand ‘Priestley’. I cannot find much about this manufacture. Maybe, one piano manufature created some range of piano, and made one range of piano using this name. Or perhaps by Frederick Priestley whose piano is one of the collections at the Victoria and Albert museum!? If you own or know about Priestley piano, please share your information!