Lightly stressed soundboard

Chickering pianos pre-1900, were famous for textural clarity and differentiation of 4 distinct registers. These tonal attributes can only be produced by low compression, low stress soundboards. The boards will have minimal crown and minimal board loading. All our Chickering piano soundboards have this low compression type of soundboard. Unfortunately, almost all current rebuilding shops don’t either understand or value how central the low compression soundboard is to achieving the Chickering aesthetic. By and large, their “restored” pre-1900 Chickering pianos will receive a standard issue, modern, Steinway inspired, high stress, high compression soundboard.

Rebuilt with a high compression board, the resulting Chickering piano shells do not sound like Chickering pianos. They  instead sound like poor imitations of the modern piano. Even if one wanted, for some reason, to turn a Chickering piano into a modern piano, it wouldn’t work well because the entire structure of the Chickering piano, from the ground up, was designed to produce a pre-modern tonal aesthetic.

We respect and value the pre-1900 Chickering piano aesthetic highly. Creating the tonal aesthetic Chickering pianos were famous for is the entire reason I am in this business…their aesthetic resonates with my own aesthetic. Therefore, we approach our Chickering piano rebuilds in a way that reproduces that original intended aesthetic.