Butler & Sons Piano Restorations

16/02/2025

🎶Notch…notch…baby🎵🎤.

16/02/2025

After marking unison center lines on the new bridge cap for this 160 year old Bechstein, we determine the spacing between front and back row of bridge pins on original cap and then use our plexiglass spacers and carefully align to our unison center lines and then mark the bridge for our front and back row. Using little jigs like this keep our front & back row parallel to each other. We then choose the appropriate punch that best matches the spacing in between each pin of a given row. Looks like chaos but when I get to this point, I see light at the end of the tunnel. The hard, time consuming part of setting bearing is complete.

19/10/2024

Re-installing dampers in a 1870 Knabe Concert Grand piano. Thank you to my collaborators on this project-Mr. .erwin , Mr. Dean , and Mr. Kevin Hancock.

20/11/2023

The Butler & Sons Piano workshop is closed this week (for the first time since November 2019!!) for some much needed rest and relaxation. 🏕️ (Warning: the rest of this post has nothing to do with pianos. Proceed with caution if you aren’t interested in super yummy food.)

As a public service to you all, we would like to share our new favourite camping dessert - Croissant S’mores - stop what you are doing and make these now! You can thank us later 😉

Are you Team Reese’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups?!? Or Team Ghirardelli dark chocolate sea salt caramel?!? (We are a divided household 😬)

19/10/2023

Team Butler invited Mr. David Stanwood out to our rebuilding shop so that we could get a refresher course on his Precision Touchweight Design Metrology. It was an awesome week and now my brain is swollen! Thanks to David and his lovely wife for coming down to indoctrinate us in his SNAP protocols.

20/08/2022

My tuning view today. The Butlers were asked to return to The Kennedy Center to service all Performance, green room and practice room pianos. It’s an overwhelming amount of work that will hopefully be very rewarding and educational. Shout out to my Dad, Rick Butler for teaching me the trade, and unknowingly to me, how to service all pianos, as if they were concert instruments. His training, along with what I’ve learned from my PTG colleagues has given me this opportunity. Hope to make you proud pops.

08/06/2022

Tell me you are a piano technician’s wife without telling me…

Husband sees pasta fagioli soup recipe card on counter: What is Ditalini pasta?

Wife: Small tube shaped pasta

Husband: *staring blankly*

Wife: Pasta shaped like plate bushings

Husband: Oh ok got it

29/03/2022

26/08/2021

Well….another successful restoration has been completed. 135 year old Steinway B. Lots of structural repairs on this one. Took longer than anticipated but we got it done. I was anxious for this one to leave but as soon as the movers loaded it, I instantly missed it. Thanks to my dad for once again helping me finish this puppy off, thanks to my wife Rebecca for all of her help and for tolerating the many nights I spent in the shop getting this done. Thanks to all my suppliers- Dale Erwin for soundboard panel, Bolduc for bridge capping material, Heller Bass for the awesome strings, Metro plating for all the hardware restoration, and a big thanks to Edson for the fabulous job refinishing this piano! Thanks to Dave Hughes for never getting tired of letting me ask questions and to anyone & everyone else I may have forgotten….thank you. I love what I do, and am thankful for my peers and comrades whom I’m constantly learning from!

22/06/2021

Getting ready to string a 136 year old Steinway B. Mic’d the pins and there are roughly 4 different sizes within the same box-.281, .282, .282+, .283. The bigger ones will obviously go in the Bass and smallest up in the treble. This piano has received the full treatment- new soundboard, bridges, pinblock, new action rails, complete new action. Case will be refinished when belly work is complete. Inner rim has been refinished with a simple clear coat.