Archive Music

Changey Stringy


I’m putting Eric on one of my Guitars, although
I’m not sure if it’s going to improve my playing :-).

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Screws and Gears


A quick closeup for #MacroMonday over on Google+ because I can’t resist the mini-theme ‘music’!

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Ibach Eight


Last photo of the series for now – here’s a front view of my 1906 Ibach piano. As you can see, it’s partly painted yellow and pretty banged up on the exterior, but that doesn’t hurt the insides, which are in very good shape. My long-term plan is to varnish the black parts properly and just leave the yellow like it is – and to get it properly tuned again. It’s actually very well playable at the moment if you avoid the three detuned keys, so I think I can call myself very fortunate to have this great instrument.

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Ibach Seven


Tuning pins, big screws and thick strings on my old Ibach piano.

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Ibach Six


That’s a wee bit more complicated to tune than your average guitar –
lots and lots of tuning pins on my 1906 Ibach piano.

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Ibach Five


Another view of the Birdcage in my old Ibach piano – the top-dampener mechanic might be out of fashion, but it still works perfectly and certainly sounds great.

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Ibach Four


This is why the Oberdämpfer (top-dampener) mechanic is also called Birdcage Action – the hammers are really caged in by the dampener rods. My Ibach piano actually has a more advanced top dampener mechanic than other cheaper pianos from that time period, because Ibach and Blüthner used a better development of the concept. It still has much more sustain than modern pianos, but it sounds great nevertheless. I should probably use this series of photos for a proper article about the piano over on my “other” blog!

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Ibach Three


A more detailed look at the mechanic of my 1906 Ibach piano – this is the upper part where no dampeners are needed on the strings. It’s a fascinating machine only made of wood, felt and metal!

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Ibach Two


Piano guts! The lid desperately needs varnishing, but the insides are beautiful. Here you can see the Oberdämpfer, top-dampener piano mechanic, also called Birdcage Action in English because the wires from the dampeners are caging the hammers in the mid and lower octaves. As far as we know, this is the original mechanic from this piano, only the hammers and some felt parts were replaced about 25 years ago and considering it’s over 100 years old, the refurbishment is practically brand-new.

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Ibach One


In January, I shared a couple of older photos of my piano, but now I’ve taken some new ones which I processed in colour this time. It’s an Ibach upright piano originally built in 1906 with the older mechanic type, which has the dampeners above the hammers – more on that in the next days. This piano was originally given to my mother by her grandfather in 1959, who found it in an old military bunker and when I started playing piano in the early 1990s, it was still in great shape and just needed tuning and some refurbishments on the mechanic. Today it’s no beauty on the outside because it was painted partly yellow in the 1970s, but it still sounds gorgeous except three slightly detuned keys (the ones which got new strings in the 1990s) which need to be fixed. The keys have yellowed somewhat (slightly exaggerated here because of the warm colour timing) and were probably still made out of ivory, but overall the keyboard looks very good and, above all, plays well!

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