OMG!! That poor piano! Good call re the “glue” not being just from beverages… what an odd substance.

I don’t think I’ll be flying through O’Hare until March..l hope I can see it again, and hopefully it will still be ok!

One of my former piano tuners, the gentleman I worked with before moving here, was in charge of he prep when a “new” public piano was installed in the airport near where I used to live. That piano was not near any restaurants or bars. Hopefully it won’t take that same level of abuse!

Back to the O’Hare piano, I wonder if he got any special permission to work on it. A lot of times, keyboard covers have a lock, so at minimum, someone would have had to unlock it for him. But also, I wonder if you just started randomly tuning a public piano, if they would actually let you do that….

Anyway, thank you @Gombessa for posting this video!

Btw what kind of piano do you think that is? I don’t remember seeing a logo on th epilate, and there’s no shot of the fallboard (if memory serves).

    ShiroKuro it’s a kimball.. and it’s very short, I think under 5 feet.
    I’m not sure how old the piano is. Kimball was a Chicago-based manufacturer, so it was possibly chosen because of this. I think manufacturing ceased in the mid 90s.

        Sgisela
        In the video you can read K1 032975. Assuming that's the model and serial number and that this site is correct, the piano would date back to the mid 1890s.

            candela I’m quite skeptical the piano is that old. The finish is in rough shape, but it looks like a modern polished ebony finish, and my recollection of the logo on the fall board is that it was a newer font than that used on 1890s kimballs. It’s possible le that someone did a complete refinishing of the piano at some point, but I’m skeptical that someone would spend the time/effort to do any kind of restoration work on an old Kimball. I’m not trying to put shade on the brand, but they were never high end of the market pianos.

                Sgisela so it was possibly chosen

                I would guess that the piano was either donated or purchased used very cheaply... I could be wrong of course!

                That makes me wonder about the Charlotte Airport piano... I don't think I ever took a photo of it...

                  +1. A Kimball K1 is 5'1" according to old Piano Blue Book links. And this one has a more modern logo, used around the 1990s.

                  I did some googling and didn't find any Kimballs with the triangular/trapezoidal "sound holes" in the plate, which makes me wonder if this is actually a real, US-made Kimball from when they were still producing pianos up until 1996. Perhaps it's one of the dozens of brands where the name was sold to an Asian piano maker and re-imported in the 2000s?

                    Sgisela I’m quite skeptical the piano is that old.

                    Yes, I had doubts about that as well. Without knowing anything about Kimballs or whether this is one, I agree that this piano doesn't look 130 years old.

                      Gombessa I had this same thought, although of all things one might decide to ‘stencil’ on a fall board, I’m not sure how much affection there is for Kimball.

                      I don’t really want to cast shade on Kimball. They made lots and lots of pianos, and my grandmother, who was a much better pianist than I am, inherited one and it was the piano she played for most of her life. I have very warm memories of her playing the piano. But I know it had all sorts of issues.

                        So....I got a little bit sucked into the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what this is.

                        It says Kimball, and it has a Langer action, which Kimball did own in the 90s. But there's a "2006" date visible on the back action:

                        And the action is labeled "Langer Accelerated Action:"

                        That appears to be a trademark filed in 2008 and first used in 2007.

                        The registering company, "Musical Properties, Inc." seems to have registered a number of piano-related trademarks in the 2000s, most of which were abandoned or cancelled. https://trademark.justia.com/784/39/marshall-78439113.html. Interestingly, among the more interesting ones is...Technics??

                        Technics has been around for over 50 years, and this TM application was in 2008, so it seems like this holding company just...tries to trademark abandoned names? Anyways, looks like a bit of a dead end.

                        But the distinctive triangular "sound holes" look like a lead, and very familiar:

                        A bit of searching yielded that Young Chang, and few of its sub-brands Pramberger, and Weber, use a very similar hole design and plate color. It's not exact, but it's darned close:



                        Not every detail matches, but it's pretty close, and the design details are much closer to the O'Hare piano than any of the Kimball designs I've seen.

                        So thus far, my guess is that this isn't a actually a Kimball, but rather some other piano rebranded as Kimball, maybe an early-2000s Asian model, likely one cheap enough to not include duplex scaling.

                        Anyways, that was my evening of uneducated sleuthing 🙂

                          Gombessa But there's a "2006" date visible on the back action:

                          Pardon my ignorance, but is that absolutely a date? I ask since, if I'm reading right, it predates the other dates you mention. So could 2006 be a serial or model number?

                              ShiroKuro No you're right. It could be anything.

                              I was originally thinking 2006 aligns with the TM application somewhat, but then figured the TM date was a false lead, and thus the 2006 might not be anything, as you suspect.

                              From what little I've seen, the main reason it could be a real Kimball is the Langer action. And the main reason it might not be is because the plate is so distinctive from anything else from Kimball (and everything other than the fallboard has been debadged).

                              It's definitely a fun little mystery!

                                If any of us are in that part of the airport, we’ll have to snoop around and see what we can find out!