Another longstanding project got moved forward substantially last week. When I got my new piano a year and half ago I had them put the feet up on little risers. Being very tall I needed to raise the whole thing about two inches so I could fit my knees under the keyboard. Well this worked great except that pedals, which were high to begin with, ended up very high off the floor. I asked the piano people (who rebuild old pianos so they clearly have the expertise) if they could lower the pedals somehow. Obviously this would involve some custom work, and they said they’d have to think about how. So I looked at it and took some measurements and thought about and made some plans and eventually sent them some drawings.
They said it looked doable, but wanted to confirm my measurements. Last month the dude was out here to tune the piano, and agreed my plan was solid and my dimensions were correct. So he took the pedal assembly off the piano and back to his shop. He was delayed in bringing it back, mainly because he was in a car crash and it took a while before he could drive again. Also he handed the work off to one of the guys in the shop. Meanwhile I tried using a MIDI sustain pedal but there was no where to plug it in, so that didn’t work so well.
Last week dude came back with the modified pedal assembly. My drawings had a block at the top to act as a spacer. But they way built it the top was extended seamlessly with the spacer integrated. It looks beautiful but is no longer removable if I want to revert the pedals to their original height. And unfortunately the dude mis-measured, and the pedals now hang below the height added by the spacers. So if I ever want to roll the piano over to the other side of my living room I’d have to take the pedal assembly off first. Oy! The good news is pedal is now at a very playable height, much improved. And, dude came up with a pretty ingenious solution: it only needs to come up a half or three-quarters of an inch, so he can just swap out the wheels on the casters for slightly bigger ones. Unfortunately that means yet another follow-up visit. Ah well, we’ll get there.