]]> http://www.fordpiano.com/progress/grand-pianos/mason-hamlin/feed/ 0 http://www.fordpiano.com/pianos-for-sale/upright-pianos-for-sale/mathushek-console/ http://www.fordpiano.com/pianos-for-sale/upright-pianos-for-sale/mathushek-console/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:16:34 +0000 Mike Ford http://www.fordpiano.com/?p=1082 This Mathushek console is brand new and has a cherry finish with Queen Anne style legs.  We are asking $3,990

Completed Piano:

We are asking $32,500 for this piano which includes free delivery in the continental United States, one in house tuning, a matching bench and 10 year warranty.

We are asking $12,500 which includes delivery, matching bench, 10 year warranty, and one in-home tuning.

If you like what you see then please post a comment!

Step into the confines of Ford Piano in Peekskill, and the trip from the sidewalk to repair shop is like stepping into a past century.

It’s a world of wood, wires, varnish, hand tools and manual labor — 18th-century technology and craftsmanship at its finest. It’s the kind of world that Janos Fekete entered when he came over from the old country, Hungary, to begin a new life in America. His sons, grandsons and great-grandsons still live and work in that world today.

John Ford, the current proprietor of the longtime piano business, keeps an old work bench his grandfather used in his shop as a touchstone to family heritage, and he can spin off stories about his ancestors as easily as he can play a bluesy piano riff.

“I’m a jazz and blues guy, though I was classically trained. I love it all,” Ford said.

His ancestor might not recognize the kind of music that John Ford likes to play, but he could certainly understand the work he does.

Old Janos Fekete was a young and talented cabinet-maker, but he couldn’t stand the one task to which junior members of the trade were assigned, measuring corpses for their coffins. So it was off to the Yorkville neighborhood of upper Manhattan, home to a burgeoning piano-making industry in the late 1800s. Janos was a manically hard worker: He would build three piano interiors in the time it would take most workers to build two, and he kept his wood-shaving tools so sharp they could split a hair. Family lore has it that Janos, who worked for a time as a foreman at Steinway Pianos, came up with the name of the “Baby Grand.”

Ford’s father was an innovator who designed new mechanical systems for the piano and created new tools for piano work. In typical American fashion, he changed the family name to Ford.

John Ford started his own business in the piano trade, selling, tuning and repairing the instruments, with the bulk of the work in rebuilding older pianos in his 20,000-square -foot workshop on Division Street in Peekskill. Like his forebears, he, too, has big ideas.

Next door to his showroom is a performance space that Ford has been meticulously planning for years. About $500,000 has already been put into the construction of the venue, and Ford is hoping to open it in about another year’s time. He has to install a kitchen and a bar — and not just any bar. He’s looking to build a 35-foot-long bar that gently curves to suggest the lines of a piano, inlaid with 88 white tiles, the number of keys on a piano. He also wants high-end musical talent to feel right at home playing there.

“My entire career has been helping piano players. I have so many favors to call in,” said Ford, a married father of two who lives in Cortlandt.

The acoustics of the room will be just right for the piano, Ford says. It’s an ambition he’s long pursued: “I just want to have the fun of listening to these gorgeous pianos I’ve built. I love music, and I love to cook, and I love good wine, so it’s a natural.” There’s still plenty of work to do on the performance space, but Ford says, “Nothing is going to stop me. I’ve been thinking about it for decades.”

When the performance venue opens up, he might start turning over more of the business to his two sons, Mike and John III. They’re the fourth generation of piano men in the family.

Mike Ford says he’s ready to follow in those footsteps. “It’s great working in a family business, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Mike Ford, 26. “I’m learning the trade my family has been doing for 100 years, and my dad is a great guy to work for. It’s part of the reason we’re successful … we’re a tight-knit family, and we’ve been doing it forever.”

Please check back soon for more pictures.

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This gorgeous cherry Krakauer 41″ period piece console piano is ready to be fully reconditioned.

We are asking $5,000.

Please contact us if you are interested

This piano comes with a matching bench, local delivery, 5 year warranty, and 1 in-house tuning.

We are asking $3,500

Please contact us if you are interested

This 1987 K. Kawai grand piano is a solidly built piano, that will last for many years to come. The piano also has an electronic QRS Pianomation player installed.

The price includes local delivery, matching bench, 5 year warranty, and 1 in-house tuning.

Price: $8,000

Inquire ]]> http://www.fordpiano.com/pianos-for-sale/sold/1987-kawai-grand-player-piano/feed/ 2 http://www.fordpiano.com/progress/grand-pianos/steinway-grand-model-or-duo-art/ http://www.fordpiano.com/progress/grand-pianos/steinway-grand-model-or-duo-art/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:34:18 +0000 Mike Ford http://www.fordpiano.com/?p=262

This 1926 Steinway & Sons Duo Art grand piano model “OR” is 6’4.5″ and is ready to be rebuilt and refinished. The piano will have all new action parts, a new pin block, strings, and tuning pins, and a new finish. The Duo Art mechanism will be completely rebuilt with all new tubing, hoses, pneumatic and bellows clothe.  The price includes local delivery, matching bench, 10 year warranty, and 1 in-house tuning. Please contact us for more information.

Keys to third-generation shop owner’s passion are all in the music
Abigail Klingbeil
Kim Papa sits near the back of Ford Piano tapping the keys on one of the shop’s shiny black instruments.  Boom.  Boom.  Bing.
The untrained ear can differentiate the low booms from the high-pitched bings.   But Papa, a trained piano  tuner and four-year Ford Piano employee, can hear much more.
She taps a tuning fork to hear an A note, the international concert pitch, then tunes the rest of the piano in relation to that note.  It’s 12:15 p.m. and Papa and other rescuers of neglected pianos are fast at work.
The company’s ebullient owner, John Ford, is the third generation to run this piano repair and sales shop, which his Hungarian immigrant grandfather founded during the height of the late 19th-century piano boom.
Ford is now in the process of buying the three-story building at 15 South Division Street and the historic Hermax building next door, where he plans to open a music and dance hall.

He will move his 9-foot Steinway Concert Grand, now at his home, into the new hall when it opens.
“Pianos are my avocation as well as my vocation,” Ford says.  “When I leave here, most times I go home and play.”
Downstairs, former cabinet maker Mike Logano takes the tuning pins out of a piano sent in for an overhaul.The sounding board, part of the piano’s innards, is exposed Logano will insert a new board and strings,  and refinish the piano’s exterior.
When Logano, a 10-year employee, is finished, the piano will be shuttled upstairs on a massive elevator lift  for tuning and final touches.
Piano overhauls can cost as much as $15,000.00.  Ford says he treats each piano the same, whether it’s owned by a Peekskill resident or a famous musician.  His roster of customers has included John Lennon, Barry Manilow, Roberta Flack and Duke Ellington.
Although the store’s expansive front windows offer people strolling by a glance at shiny concert grands and funky player pianos.  Ford says he gets little foot traffic.  “Usually, people don’t walk off the street and say ”I knew I needed a piano,’”  he says.
But they do track Ford Piano down from distant locales.  Last year, the business repaired pianos from Fairbanks,  Alaska, and Savannah, Ga.
Up-stairs again Chris is touching up the music desk of a shiny chestnut piano with brass feet.  Nearby, dozens of pianos wait their turn to be massaged back into their earlier glory.
A seven-year employee, Gonzalez is an all-purpose piano mechanic.  After being laid off, he randomly applied for a job refurbishing pianos for another company back in the summer of 1989.  “It turned out to be a summer thing that never ended,” Gonzalez says.

John Ford Jr. Can Rebuild an Instrument From the Bottom Up…

Like people, pianos decay over time. The instruments seem to be static, but the strings exert 20 tons of pressure on the frame, which eventually tears the inside compartment apart.  The passing years also ravage the finish and the intricate mechanism known as the action, a series of joints and levers that link the keys with the hammers that strike the strings.

Pianos have one major advantage over humans, though: They can be overhauled to a state as pristine as the day they left the factory floor.

In the piano-rebuilding business, most of the work is done by specialists.  Belly experts fix cracks in the soundboard and repair the pinblock, which holds the tuning pegs of the piano.  Refinishers are the trade’s cosmetic surgeons.  Action masters ensure that each key lines up straight and that the hammers hit the strings at the proper angle with the right amount of force.  Tuners add the final touch, turning discord into harmony.

As a general practitioner in a field characterized by a strict division of labor, John Ford Jr. is an anomaly.  Mr. Ford’s expertise in all phases of piano rebuilding results from his unusual upbringing, where he learned at the hands of two masters, his grandfather Janos Fekete and his father for whom he is named.

“Very few people are qualified to rebuild a entire piano,” said Norman Snyder, who just completed his tenure as president of the New York City chapter of the Piano Technicians Guild.  “A hundred years ago it was more common to have three generations of a family stay in the business, nowadays that’s pretty rare.”

Mr. Ford’s piano lineage stretches back to the 19th century, when his Hungarian-born grandfather came to New York and got caught up in the piano boom.

At the time, pianos were essential fixtures in middle-and-upper-class parlors.  According to the national Piano foundation, consumers bought 171,138 pianos in 1900.  That number soared to 364,545 in 1909, dipped a bit to 347,589 in 1923, and dropped off sharply in the 1930′s.

Mr. Fekete worked as an itinerant action finisher until the early 1910′s, when he bought a four-story brick building on east 74th street in Manhattan and ran his rebuilding shop from the ground floor.

“He was a character,” Mr. Ford said of his grandfather.  “He was  bald as a cue ball, under 5 feet tall, and a real hustler for work.  I remember him as a guy who ate, breathed, and slept pianos.  He always had on a little apron and worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.  He took his last breath in the piano shop.”

After Mr. Fekete died in 1958, his son, who shared the same name, changed it to John Ford.  The family continued to live above the shop and John Ford Jr. grew up with tools in his hand and the clear notion that he was being groomed to learn the trade.

“My father didn’t believe in child labor laws,” he said.  “His motto was ‘If a kid can walk, give him a screwdriver.”

John Ford started Ford Piano Co. in 1985 in Peekskill to carry on a century-old family tradition that his grandfather brought to America from Hungary.

John Fekete, who emigrated to the United States from Hungary in the 1890s, opened Fekete Pianos about 1912 or 1913 in Manhattan.

Fekete ran the shop until his death in 1957, passing on the business to his son, John, who changed his family name to Ford and the name of the business to Ford Piano Co.

Meanwhile, John started a new business: Ford Piano Supplies. He sold both businesses five years ago when he retired. He died in 1999.

His son, John Jr., who was “pretty much born in the piano shop,” started his own company in 1985 to keep alive the family tradition. Since its founding, Ford Piano Co.’s growth “has been phenomenal,” he said.

In 1985, it was a one-man operation. Today, it employs six workers and grosses $300,000 yearly.

“We pretty much have a waiting list of people who want our pianos,” Ford said. “We have a lot of work. I’m blessed with people who love to work as much as I do. It’s fun to do this sort of thing.”

Ford Piano rebuilds and sells about 100 pianos a year.

“We’re basically rebuilding specialists,” Ford said. “We also sell new pianos. We have a sales showroom in the old 5- and 10-cent store in the middle of the artists’ district in Peekskill.”

Bronxville resident Lee Schwartz, 70, has known the owner of Ford Piano since age 12. He first met John Ford Sr. when he came to the youngster’s home to tune his piano.

Later, Schwartz went down to Fekete’s shop in Manhattan, and they became friends. Eventually, he worked with Ford Piano as a subcontractor.

“To me, to be able to take wood and metal and make great sounds out of them is the most exciting part of making a piano,” said Schwartz.

What also made his work at Ford Piano enjoyable was the attitude of its owners.

“I cannot put a finger on it,” Schwartz said. “They were nice people to work with. They’re very attentive to the needs of the other people in the field.”

During his nearly 60-year involvement, the piano business has undergone many changes, most notably the emergence of Japanese piano makers like Yamaha as dominant players in the industry.

He’s also noticed a disturbing trend: a dearth of piano repair people. Nationwide, Schwartz said, 600,000 pianos are sold every year, so in a decade some six million pianos will need servicing. There simply aren’t enough people to meet the need, he added.

In Westchester, about a dozen people can repair pianos. He had no idea how many pianos are sold yearly in the county.

“We have quite a number of wealthy people in Westchester,” Schwartz said. “I suggest every one of them has a piano.”

John Jr.’s foray into the business goes back to his childhood in the 1960s.

“I started at a very young age,” said Ford, 51. “I was pretty much born in the piano shop. My father did not believe in the child labor law. He used to say, ‘If a child can walk, put a screwdriver in his hand.’”

Ford, who grew up in Manhattan, took piano lessons for a dozen years as a child and “always enjoyed working with my hands. Time seems to go very fast that way,” he said.

What’s the most exciting aspect of Ford Piano Co.?

Rebuilding a piano is the most exciting aspect of the job, Ford said.

“I do derive a certain amount of satisfaction seeing the instrument all done and beautiful,” he said.

To him, restoring a piano to its original beauty is a work of art that quenches his creative thirst.

“We’re taking an object that is 100 years old and putting in all the parts and rebuilding the beauty that will last another 100 years. That’s exciting,” he said.

“When we get a piano, we spend months and months on it. When we’re done, it is a magnificent instrument. There’s a sense of gratification. That happens a lot.”

Ford Piano’s customers include individual musicians, concert halls and “private parties who appreciate music.” Parents whose children take lessons also buy pianos.

“I firmly believe that every home should have a piano in it because it’s a thing of beauty,” Ford said.

Joel Martin, a Tarrytown resident who plays piano with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra, bought his first piano from Ford Piano seven years ago.

“When I told him what my requirements were, he said ‘I think I have one,’” Martin said, referring to John Jr. “The first piano he showed me, I ended up buying it.”

Martin has since referred more than 150 customers to Ford.

“I think when they want the absolute best, he is my first choice,” Martin said. “He has a lot of honesty and integrity toward his work. As a person, he delivers the goods.”

Over time, piano aficionados’ tastes for the instrument have changed, especially their preferences for appearances and shades. But this is nothing unusual, Ford said.

“Different colors come and go,” he said. “They would go out of fashion and then they would come back in fashion.”

Red mahogany pianos were popular in the 1960s, then fell out of favor in the 1970s as walnut came to the fore.

“Now, mahogany is popular and walnut is not,” Ford said. “People change. It has nothing to do with the instrument.”

As for the looks, he said antique-looking legs ranked high in popularity in the early 20th century. By mid-century, “modern-looking” pianos were the vogue.

“Now, people request the old look – antique looking,” Ford said.

The price of pianos also has changed. In the 1950s, a good quality piano cost $500 compared to as much as $25,000 today, Ford said.

A small “nice upright” sells for $2,000 while a rebuilt Steinway can fetch $25,000, Ford said.

“We have both kinds of pianos and everything in between,” he said.

While running a thriving business is satisfying, Ford is equally pleased by the fact that his family has enriched the music world.

“My grandfather is credited with coining the phrase ‘Baby Grand,’ which refers to a small grand piano,” he said. “My father invented tools and concussions that have become standards in the industry.”

“I do have a national reputation. Within the last year we rebuilt and shipped pianos to Alaska, Georgia, Maryland, all over New England and North Carolina,” Ford said.

Ford said he is often surprised when people call him to say they bought a piano from his grandfather 60 years ago and ask if he can repair it for them.

Of course, he can.

“We’re not a fly-by-night operation,” said Ford. “We are here to stay.”