The short version: a client in Maryland shipped their 1944 Steinway Model S baby grand across the country to our shop for restoration. It arrived with a pinblock that was literally falling apart, a filthy plate, and a soundboard buried under many layers of grime and dust, with cracks needing repair. We installed a new pinblock, cleaned and refinished the plate, shimmed the soundboard cracks with solid spruce, restored the bridges, polished and lacquered the agraffes, restrung the piano, installed new Renner hammers, shanks, wippens and dampers plus new red felts, regulated and voiced the action, and restored the pedals and lyre. At the owner’s request, we left the original walnut cabinet finish untouched. Below, I walk you through the whole Steinway Model S restoration, photo by photo.
I’m Trevor Nelson. I’ve been in the piano business for 40 years and a Registered Piano Technician (RPT) with the Piano Technicians Guild for 38 of them. I trained at Bösendorfer in Vienna, spent 12 years as a university piano technician, worked at the Banff Centre, and care for pianos played by the Boulder Philharmonic, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, the Boulder Bach Festival and the CU College of Music. Renaissance Piano Service serves Boulder, the Denver metro area and greater Colorado, with a piano gallery in Lafayette. But a growing share of our restoration work comes from much farther away. This piano is a good example of why owners ship pianos to us from across the country.
The piano: a 1944 Steinway Model S baby grand
The Model S is Steinway’s smallest grand. Steinway lists it at 5′1″ (155 cm) long and says the design was introduced in the 1930s “to invite the majesty of the Steinway sound into almost any space.” Independent Steinway references date its introduction to 1936. M. Steinert & Sons, one of the oldest Steinway dealers, writes that it debuted that year at $885, below the price of the Model M, as a Depression-era way to bring a true Steinway grand to more homes.
In Steinway’s current grand lineup, the Model S sits at the small end: the S at 5′1″, the Model M “medium grand” at 5′7″, then the larger living-room, salon and classic grands, up to the 8′11¾″ Model D concert grand.
A Model S built in 1944 also comes from after Steinway’s 1936 patent on its diaphragmatic soundboard, which tapers from a thicker center toward the edges. Steinway’s 1937 pamphlet announcing that design said it was being incorporated in all Steinway pianos, so a 1944 board should be of that design. That matters when you’re deciding whether to keep the original soundboard, as we’ll see.
This piano is serial number 316799. Steinway’s serial-number charts put it in 1944, a year when the company assigned only about 1,000 serial numbers, compared with about 5,000 in 1941. That count includes the Victory Verticals built for the armed forces, so a Model S grand from that year is a rare instrument.
Why this piano traveled from Maryland to our shop
When an owner ships a piano to us, here’s what I offer: a clear, itemized record of what was replaced and what was kept, a conversation about every major decision before it’s made, and real respect for the original instrument. This 1944 Model S shows what that looks like in practice.
The owner found us online and chose to ship the piano from Maryland to Colorado for the work.
If you own a Steinway that needs serious work and you aren’t near Colorado, contact us to discuss shipping your piano for restoration, or call me at (303) 521-3722.
Arrival: grime, dust and a cracked soundboard
When the piano arrived, the soundboard had many layers of grime and dust, and cracks that needed repair. A grand piano’s soundboard sits under the strings and plate, where dust settles for decades and almost nobody can reach it to clean.
What I’m judging at this stage isn’t the dirt. It’s what’s underneath. Does the board still have its crown? Are the ribs holding? Is the cracking limited to a few repairable splits, or is the whole board tired? Those answers decide whether a soundboard is worth keeping.
This was the piano’s original soundboard, and the owner chose to restore it rather than replace it. We cleaned it, shimmed its cracks and refinished it, as you’ll see below.
The pinblock was literally falling apart
The pinblock is the laminated hardwood block under the plate that holds the tuning pins. Every tuning pin is driven into it, and it has to grip each one tightly enough to hold string tension for years. When a pinblock fails, the piano can’t hold a tune, and no amount of tuning will fix that.
This one was literally falling apart. There was no question of repairing it. It had to be replaced, and that meant taking the plate out of the piano, which also gave us full access to the soundboard and bridges.
Cleaning and refinishing the plate (harp)
The cast-iron plate, which many of us in the trade call the harp, carries the enormous tension of all the strings. On this piano it was filthy. The first step was a thorough cleaning, and this photo shows exactly how much grime came off: the washed section on one side, the original dirt on the other.
After cleaning, the plate was refinished. You can see the result in the photos further down, under the new strings.
Restoring the soundboard and bridges
With the plate out, I repaired the soundboard cracks by shimming them with solid spruce, the same wood the soundboard is made of. You can see one shim in this photo as the pale strip in the board.
The bridges carry the vibration of the strings into the soundboard, so they have to be right. I pulled the old bridge pins in preparation for restoring the bridge: re-pinning, resurfacing and re-notching.
Notching is careful handwork. Steinway itself notes that its bridges are “notched by hand for precise, individual string-bearing.” Each notch helps define exactly where a string’s speaking length ends, so it affects clarity of tone.
A note on keeping the original soundboard
There’s an honest debate among rebuilders about whether to keep an older Steinway’s soundboard or replace it. Steinway’s own Restoration Center says that in pianos more than 50 years old, replacement “is often necessary.” Many independent rebuilders replace boards too, and some build new ones to the original pattern. I respect all of those approaches. When a healthy original board can be properly repaired and refinished, I believe keeping it preserves something you can’t buy new. When a board is flat or badly cracked, it should be replaced. In every case, it’s the owner’s choice, made with the facts in front of them.
On this piano, the owner opted to restore the original board rather than replace it, so we cleaned it, shimmed its cracks with solid spruce and refinished it. As a post-1936 Steinway, it should already have the diaphragmatic design Steinway patented that year. I cover the trade-offs in more depth in my guide to buying a restored Steinway.
Steinway pinblock replacement: fitting the new block
Compare this photo with the failed block above. A Steinway pinblock replacement is one of the most exacting jobs in a restoration. The new block has to be fitted to the piano and to the underside of the plate, so the plate seats correctly and the tuning pins are held firmly and evenly across the whole scale. Get it right, and the piano holds its tuning for decades. Get it wrong, and nothing else in the restoration matters.
With the soundboard and bridges finished and the new pinblock fitted, the refinished plate went back into the piano. Its perimeter bolts fasten it to the rim, and from here the piano was ready for its agraffes and new strings.
Agraffes: cleaned, polished, lacquered and reinstalled
Agraffes are the small brass fittings screwed into the plate that the strings pass through on their way to the tuning pins. They set the spacing and height of each string at the front end of its speaking length. On this piano, I removed them, then cleaned, polished and lacquered every one.
Restringing the piano
With the new pinblock in, the soundboard and bridges restored, the plate refinished and the agraffes back in place, the piano was fully restrung.
The new action parts are from Renner, the German maker that has supplied Steinway for more than a century and that Steinway has owned since 2019. According to Piano Buyer, Renner parts are now used in all new Steinways. I explain the choice between Steinway’s own parts and Renner’s in my guide to buying a restored Steinway.
In the action, we replaced the hammers, shanks, wippens and dampers, then regulated and voiced the piano so it plays evenly and sounds the way a Steinway should.
Pedals and lyre: from tarnished to polished
The pedals and lyre take a beating over 80 years. This “in progress” photo shows the difference in a single frame: one brass pedal polished, two still tarnished.
The finished piano, with its original cabinet
We completed the restoration in 2014. The owner decided not to have the walnut cabinet refinished, so the case is still original. That’s a perfectly good choice. A restoration’s scope should fit the owner’s goals and budget, and many owners value the character of an original finish. What changed is everything you play and hear: the pinblock, strings, bridges, action parts and felts, along with the refinished plate and restored pedals.
What we did, line by line
I believe every restoration should come with an itemized list, so here is this one:
- New pinblock
- Original soundboard cleaned, cracks shimmed with solid spruce, and refinished (restored rather than replaced, at the owner’s choice)
- Bridges restored: bridge pins removed, resurfaced, re-notched and re-pinned with new bridge pins
- Plate (harp) thoroughly cleaned and refinished
- Agraffes removed, cleaned, polished, lacquered and reinstalled
- New strings and new tuning pins (full restringing)
- New Renner action parts: hammers, shanks, wippens and dampers
- New red felts
- Pedals and lyre restored, highly polished and lacquered
- Original walnut cabinet finish kept, at the owner’s request (not refinished)
- Action regulated and piano voiced
For a sense of what work like this costs in general, see my guide to Steinway restoration costs.
This piano’s place in history: 1944
When this Model S was built, Steinway’s New York factory was largely making things other than pianos. Like nearly every American instrument maker, Steinway was barred from normal production by wartime restrictions on iron, copper, brass and other raw materials. A slim crew built wings, tails and other parts for the Army’s CG-4A troop-transport gliders. Steinway also designed the “Victory Vertical,” a rugged 40-inch upright painted olive drab for the Army (and blue or gray for other services), built without front legs and light enough at 455 pounds for four soldiers to carry. Some were parachuted to troops. In 1944 alone, the U.S. armed forces bought 589 of them, at $486 each, so that units would have pianos of their own. With its regular production so constrained, Steinway could make only a few normal pianos in these years.
The wider world was at war, too. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, and on November 7, 1944, he won an unprecedented fourth term, defeating New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. On June 6, 1944, D-Day, Allied forces landed in Normandy. Two weeks later, on June 22, Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill. Paris was liberated on August 25, and on December 16 the German army launched the counteroffensive in the Ardennes that became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Music carried on. Leonard Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free premiered at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York on April 18, and his musical On the Town opened on Broadway on December 28. On October 30, Martha Graham’s company premiered Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring at the Library of Congress. Copland won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for it the following year, and in 1998 the Colorado Ballet became the first company outside Graham’s own to stage it. On December 1, Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Two weeks later, on December 15, bandleader Glenn Miller disappeared on a flight over the English Channel.
See more of my restoration work
Watch: scalloping soundboard ribs by hand. This video is from my restoration of a 1918 Chickering grand, not the Model S above. The whole restoration is documented in a video series on YouTube.
You can also see and play our restored Steinways in our Lafayette piano gallery. Browse the Steinways we have for sale, or read more about me and our shop.
Ship your piano to us for restoration
If your family’s Steinway needs this kind of care, distance doesn’t have to be the obstacle. Call me at (303) 521-3722 or contact us to discuss shipping your piano. I’ll ask about the piano’s model, serial number and condition, look at photos, and talk through what it needs and what it doesn’t. Then you can make the decision that’s right for you and your piano.
Frequently asked questions
Can I ship my piano to you for restoration from another state?
Yes. This 1944 Model S came to us from Maryland. Call (303) 521-3722 or contact us to discuss shipping your piano. We’ll talk through the piano’s condition and the logistics before anything is moved.
What is a Steinway Model S?
It’s Steinway’s smallest grand, a 5′1″ baby grand. Steinway says the design was introduced in the 1930s; independent references date it to 1936. In Steinway’s lineup it sits below the 5′7″ Model M.
Why do Steinway pinblocks need replacing?
The pinblock grips the tuning pins that hold every string at tension. When an old block cracks, separates or loses its grip, the piano can’t hold a tune. On this 1944 Model S the pinblock was literally falling apart, so a Steinway pinblock replacement was essential.
Did you replace the soundboard on this 1944 Steinway?
No. The owner chose to restore the original soundboard rather than replace it. We cleaned it, shimmed its cracks with solid spruce and refinished it, and restored the bridges. Whether to keep or replace a soundboard depends on its condition, and the owner makes the final decision.
Do I have to refinish the cabinet when I restore my piano?
No. The owner of this Model S chose to keep the original cabinet finish, and we restored everything else. The scope of a restoration should fit your goals and budget.
What is a Victory Vertical?
It’s the rugged 40-inch upright Steinway built for American troops during World War II. Painted olive drab for the Army, it weighed 455 pounds so four soldiers could carry it, and some were dropped by parachute.