MORE INFORMATION ON OVERS PIANOS SERVICES

All images are of new and rebuilt Overs grand pianos, unless otherwise indicated on the image.


An image of the Overs 225 grand piano no. 6, in the Boston USA purchaser's home, 2006.
This piano was exhibited by invitation at the USA Piano Technicians Guild 2006 National Convention in Rochester, NY.



TUNING AND PIANO SERVICE FOR STUDIOS, VENUES AND HOMES

Overs Pianos continues to provide their original services (since 1976) of tuning and associated work for studios, venues and home clients. Technicians Curtis Wilkinson (who has worked for Overs Pianos since 1988) and Greg Miller (who has been with the company for only a couple of years, but has also become a valuable part of the Overs staff) continue to tune and service grand and upright pianos for Overs Pianos over the greater Sydney metropolitan area including the lower mountains.
Current institutional clients include Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Sydney ABC Studios (since 1980), FM station 2MBS (since around 1995), Sydney University, Parramatta Riverside Theatres (since 1988), The Hills Centre (since 1988), Studio 301, the Trackdown Soundstage and numerous Sydney schools and smaller recording studios.

You can book your piano for service Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM via phone on (02) 9736 2332 or via email at office@overspianos.com.au at any time, but please include your preferred contact number for the office to arrange a booking.


GRAND PIANO REBUILDING & REMANUFACTURING SERVICES
Make the economic downturn work in your favour

Overs Pianos workshop is the only grand piano rebuilding facility in Australia with the full complement of equipment required for first quality grand piano re-manufacture. While there are service providers and agents who claim to be rebuilding, there are none, to our knowledge, with both the equipment and experience for in-depth work.

While the lower value of the Australian dollar has made high-end imported instruments more expensive than ever before, the rebuilding and remanufacturing services developed at Overs Pianos over many years can provide you with a real alternative to spending unprecedented sums on a high-end imported instrument. Don't be misled by the common Australian attitude that Australians can't build quality products which are competitive with the best available from anywhere in the world, including Germany.

A leading Sydney music institution recently purchased a new Hamburg Steinway concert grand for the sum of A$280,000. This unprecedented price is a consequence of the recent devaluation of the Australian dollar against the Euro. Overs Pianos has the proven capability of re-manufacturing a Steinway shell (a shell is a piano which has been stripped to a bare rim, with the iron plate and soundboard removed) to provide an instrument with superior performance at just over half the current price of a new imported Steinway concert piano. All new in-house designed and built components include: a new I-rib soundboard with bass and treble soundboard-area cut-offs; an Overs designed string scale (which provides improved tuning stability when compared to the original factory scale, the origin of which dates back to at least 1900); a new envelope-sealed pin block; revised string terminations (re-profiled and hardened capo' bars with new relocated front duplex bars and specially treated agraffes); a completely refinished case and a new custom-built keyboard (in-house designed, but built by a specialist German keyboard manufacturer) designed to work with the new patented low-friction high-speed Overs action. These custom re-manufactured concert instruments can provide you with state-of-the-art grand piano design and workmanship at a substantial saving on full replacement cost (especially valuable in cases where you might have spent more than you bargained on the concert venue's bricks and mortar). Furthermore, the pre-crowned I-rib design which Overs incorporates into his uniquely designed soundboards (which are not stressed to beyond the capabilities of spruce) ensures that Overs' boards continue to produce quality tone for decades, and not just a few years.

It would be wrong to assume that Australians cannot build first quality instruments. The same bell-curve of intellectual capability exists here in Australia as with peoples from other nations, and it is entirely reasonable to assume that it is possible for excellence to be realised here in Australia as it is in other parts of the world. If you allow yourself to audition Overs' Australian made and rebuilt instruments against the finest leading-international brands, you may be quite surprised.


HIGH-QUALITY MP3 SOUND-FILES OF THE OVERS PIANO

You can now hear quality online samples of the Australian made Overs grand piano online. Please compare these sound files, provided via links below, to your favourite piano recordings.

In 2001 Sydney concert pianist Scott Davie recorded a CD of Rachmaninoff piano works on the Overs 225 grand piano no. 3. This CD was marketed by ABC Enterprises under the ABC Classics label. Track 3 from this CD, Variations on a Theme of Corelli has been converted to mp3 at a sampling rate of 192K. This conversion is almost CD quality and comprises the complete track of over 18 minutes. With decent headphones connected to a freshly started computer the sound quality is very good. Please have a listen at;

Scott Davie's recording of Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42
Piano: Overs 225 no. 3 - duration 18'38


Scott Davie, Sydney concert pianist
"Ron Overs is a maker of pianos of exemplary quality and of demonstrably innovative design. It has been my pleasure to perform and record on Overs pianos on numerous occasions. I have recorded two commercially released CDs using his instruments - 'Lilacs', ABC Classics, 2003, and 'Pictures from an Exhibition', ABC Classics, 2006 - and also have used his instruments in concerts and studio recordings which have been broadcast nationally on radio. In all of these instances, I have had a choice of instruments from the most renown European and Japanese makers, but have chosen Overs pianos because of their playability, their fine and complex tone, their tuning stability, the overall quality of their craftsmanship and, above all, their conductivity to musically sensitive piano playing. I would not hesitate to recommend any musician to use an Overs piano."
Scott Davie

Sydney jazz pianist and composer Mike Nock recorded a CD with his trio on an Overs 225 piano. The following mp3 of Mike's composition, Acceptance, can be heard at;

The Mike Nock Trio recording of Mike Nock's composition Acceptance
Piano: Overs 225 no. 3 - duration 7'04
The performers are; Mike Nock - piano, Brett Hirst - acoustic bass, Toby Hall - drums.


Mike Nock, Sydney Pianist/Composer
"An Overs piano is a guarantee of quality and a joy to play. Ron Overs is a master craftsman and through his remarkable innovations to piano design, his instruments take the interface between performer and instrument to a new level."
Mike Nock, ONZM, Pianist/Composer
www.mikenock.com.

Please compare these recordings to your favourite piano recording, to come to an understanding that Ron Overs takes the production of quality piano tone very seriously. His re-manufactured instruments produce a similar tonal quality to the new Overs grand pianos when fully customised with Overs design features. Clearly, Overs Pianos' rebuilding services could save you from being restricted to paying more for an imported instrument. This Australian alternative of a re-manufactured instrument makes more sense than ever. Not only can you obtain a first quality product with significantly less outlay, but your purchasing funds will largely be staying right here in Australia. Do yourself and your country a favour during this uncertain period.


THE OVERS 200 CM (6'8") GRAND PIANO

If you are not looking for a full concert instrument, the Overs 200 cm grand piano might be a suitable option to paying significantly more for a leading brand mid-sized grand. Overs' first 200 cm grand piano, based on a 6'8" grand piano shell, was completed in March 2008 for St Andrews Residential College at Sydney University. This piano featured the same new technologies you will find in the Overs 225 grand - custom designed string scale, Overs I-rib soundboard complete with bass soundboard cut-off and the patented Overs action. Another of these shells is available to start production. Please advise if you would like to audition the instrument at St Andrews College. These grand pianos are more than a match for the Steinway model B, but can be built for approximately 50% of the cost price of the imported instrument. Please audition both instruments before committing to a purchase in the mid-size class. In this instance again, this 200 cm piano will allow you to make the economic downturn work in your favour.

The image below shows the first Overs 200 cm grand, commissioned by St Andrews College (a prototype of this piano was built previously for pianist Gerard Willems). The launch concert was on March 30, 2008, when Gerard Willems performed Beethoven's Tempest Sonata as the opening work, followed by other items of a high standard from various of the College students and staff.


Loading the Overs 200 no. 7 for delivery to St Andrews College



REBUILDING YOUR OWN INSTRUMENT

Another more economical option is to have your existing instrument rebuilt. This is a possibility with some piano models, depending on the design merits of the original instrument. In the past year Overs Pianos has rebuilt two small Steinway grands (a model O, 5'10" and a model A, 6'2"), re-crowning the original soundboards by fitting custom made rib extensions. Re-crowning can return an original soundboard, which has lost its stiffness, to a fully serviceable condition. Please feel free to try one of these recently rebuilt instruments with rib extensions before making a decision.

The Perry model A rebuild - taken when nearing completion, 2008

Prior to rebuilding, this hundred year old piano had a collapsed soundboard, but the soundboard panel and bridges were OK. The soundboard was jacked back to an appropriate crown before Sitka spruce rib extensions were custom built and glued to the existing ribs. Other modifications for this piano included revision of the hammer/key ratio and hardening of the capo bars.






PHOTOGALLERY OF RECENT OVERS CONCERT GRAND REBUILDS

Here are some images of Overs-rebuilt concert grand pianos, along with similar images of new factory instruments for you to compare the workmanship.


Rebuilt by Overs Pianos in 2007, this circa 1991 concert piano was completely refinished externally and internally. It came from a tertiary institution and was well used with a number of areas of case damage and superficial water damage. Work undertaken during the overhaul included re-profiling and hardening the capo' and front duplex bars (with the original front duplex lengths being retained at the client's request), new custom made Abel hammers with the action hammer/key leverage ratio being fully revised, and replacement of the bridge caps in the top two treble sections.


This image shows a close view of the re-profiled and hardened front duplex bars of the Overs rebuilt circa 1991 concert piano. Note the shallow saw cut between the front duplex bar and the iron plate strut. The cut allows the bar to be hardened right to the end, without the heat soaking out into the strut, which would prevent the bar from hardening. The same technique is used when hardening the underneath surface of the capo', to achieve a hardening which extends right to the end of the bar. The original front duplex bars were of a considerably larger profile radius, similar a the recent new Steinway grand shown below.


For you to compare Overs Pianos work with that of the current Hamburg Steinway work, this image shows a similar view of the duplex bars of a new concert piano which was supplied to the Sydney ABC studios in June 2008. The bars have a considerably larger profile radius than the re-profiled bars of Overs rebuilt pianos. The process of hardening the bars was first used by Overs in 1995; he was roundly criticised by Steinway at the time. Subsequently, some time between 1997 and 2000, Steinway started using a similar hardening process for their own production (hardening the capo' bar only - they still don't harden the front duplex bars).


Here's another image of the Overs rebuilt circa 1991 concert piano. Items of note in this image are the damper felts, which are cut with the ends at the same angle as the wooden damper heads, with the felt being glued flush with the ends of the damper heads, and without excess glue showing between the felts. Note also that the damper felts for the tri-strung bass notes have had their damper felts trimmed prior to fitting so that they don't hang down below the level of the string plane when at rest. This allows for improved damper to string clearance when the damper is at its full-lift position, which is important for allowing an instrument to be played at its highest dynamic output. The agraffes are new factory agraffes which have had their string holes re-profiled, with the entire agraffe being Electroless Nickel plated. The plating is heat treated post plating.


This image shows the same section of the bass on the Sydney ABC Centre's new Hamburg concert piano. Items of note are the dampers, which have some misalignment of the felt with the ends of the damper heads, with some showing evidence of excess glue. Dampers no. 6 and 9 (from the left) require damper-head-to wire offset adjustment. Furthermore, the damper felts for the tri-strung bass notes (particularly the higher ones to the right hand side of the image) are hanging down below the level of the string plane when at rest. This will limit the fff output of these notes until the dampers are removed and trimmed. These dampers should have been trimmed at the time of installation. At the very least, these problems should have been rectified at the time of installation in the venue. Both the new ABC pianos have been in service for seven months without any service apart from tuning since they were removed from their transport crates at the time of delivery.

Photo supplied courtesy of Reuben Bijl, showing Tony Lin performing at the Christchurch launch concert in June 2008.

In 2008 Overs Pianos rebuilt a circa 2000 Steinway D for the Music Centre of Christchurch. While the original soundboard and bridge roots were retained, a new string scale with bridge caps to suit the shorter string scale of the latest Steinway D instruments was designed. The revised scale design improves tuning stability, and was undertaken using the same design criteria as used for the D scale Overs designed for the ABC's circa 1962 piano in 1992. The capo' bar hardening had to be redone (this piano had factory hardened capo' bars) since the original hardening had shelled-off at the end near note D54. The hammers were changed for Abel custom hammers with longer-than-OEM-standard tails. The hammer/key ratio was revised by moving the 'capstan-line'. Also notice in the image that the underside of the top-lid has a higher than usual gloss level - to the same standard as the outside of the case. This provides a very nice reverse image of the piano's internals and the pianist while under concert lighting.



First published 21 Feb. 2009
Last modified 4 Mar. 2009


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