Upright pianos have vertical strings and come in many different heights. Spinet, Large Spinet, Console and Full Upright are all types of Uprights. Spinets come in heights ranging from 36-38″. Large Spinets are from 40-42″, Consoles are usually 45-46″ and Full Uprights are the tallest and range from 50″-56″ in height.
In a Grand Piano the strings are horizontal. There are three types of Grand Pianos classified by size. The Baby Grand is the smallest in size and measures anywhere from 4′ – 5′. These are typically found where space is a concern or in studios as practice pianos. The Standard Grand Piano ranges in size from 5′ -7′. This is the size most people think of then they use the term “Grand”. The longest in length is the Concert Grand Piano. It measures between 7′ and 9′. Concert Grands are used for what the name implies… concerts and large settings and are the #1 choice for performing artists around the world. The longer the piano means the bigger the sound board and thus the bigger the sound resonator. So if you are choosing a grand piano lamp, be sure of your instrument’s measurements.

When choosing the proper lamp for your piano it is best to stick to those lamps designated specifically for your type of piano. If this is not easily determined, then at least follow these general guidelines: A Spinet piano lamp may be used for any upright piano but an Upright Piano Lamp is too short for most spinet pianos. Lights listed as Grand Piano Lamps are usually too large for a Spinet or an Upright Piano. Sheet music is typically 12″ wide and a well positioned lamp will be about 3-6 inches above the music. The light should be directed towards the music away from the player’s eyes to avoid glare. Overhead room lighting is never sufficient enough light for playing music for any length of time and may cause eye strain and headaches.

Piano lamps do double duty as desk lamps because they are so good for reading (as long as they are not the clip on variety) and so are well worth the cost. Because these lights offer a way to direct the light specifically onto the reading material (gooseneck lamps work especially well for this) they are purchased by many non-piano-playing folk as well. The lamp’s ability to avoid glare (due to the construction of the lamp shade and the special treatment of the inside of the shade) make this ideal for reading and seeing notes on a page so that the piano player can effortlessly flow from page to page easily without eyestrain.

Chuck R Stewart recently purchased a piano lamp and a small piano light for his theater’s two pianos.

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1) A piano trolley with good sized wheels. Often professionals use pneumatic wheels which cope with uneven surfaces better. Furniture skates designed for indoor use can be useless, even disastrous for outside use, since their small wheels catch on and exaggerate any deformity on the ground. For example, they might sink into a gravel drive, hit a raised pavement slab, and most likely, make a mountain out of the smallest step.

2) Piano transit cover: Its main use is for storing a piano on a van to prevent other items damaging it. When actually manoeuvring a piano, heavy quilting can be a hindrance, since grip and vision may be impaired. However, a cover is important if you are moving a piano through a narrow passage between outside brick walls. This is because a small deformity in the path can result in significant movement at the top of the piano (which is further exaggerated by small unsuitable wheels on your trolley).

3) Boards, ramps, blocks and chocks for steps. These are items acquired over time, by begging and borrowing and raiding builder’s skips, until you have a wide choice to suit any obstacle. If you are moving a piano between houses, it will be a rare occasion when there are no steps at either end, and strong boards can make light work of these.

The use of boards is a subject on its own; but briefly, chocks (smaller pieces of wood)

Should be placed underneath the middle of your board to prevent excessive bending, and used to prevent your board lying on vulnerable doorway structures. Modern sliding doors often have aluminium or plastic base grooves. These can be damaged by the weight of a piano; chocks or blocks together with boards should therefore be placed to avoid contact if you are not confident you can tilt the wheels over them.

4) Blankets, cardboard and plastic sheet: These are used for wrapping panels, protecting floors and manoeuvring pianos. There are three pieces of the piano you should remove and wrap in blankets: The desk (the panel where the music sits), the key cover, and the bottom panel. Although this may not always be necessary, there is a good reason to do it. If your piano is old you cannot necessarily trust the dowels and fixings to be either present or in good order. The desk and bottom panel may fall off at the slightest movement. if nothing else, you will in the process of removing them, inspect their fixings. In more testing moving operations which involve turning the piano on its side, these three pieces must be removed.

Smooth, heavy duty, clear plastic sheet can be folded to double or quadruple its thickness. It is slippery and protective, and can facilitate controlled movement.

Old cardboard can be used for protecting floors, and especially for protecting overhanging piano lids when the piano needs to be turned and dragged through and round a doorway.

5) Mover’s Ties and heavy duty ratchet straps: Take care to exert only minimum pressure with the ratchet. It is the thickness and strength of the strap which is important so you can hold it well and trust it. Ratchet straps are important for the inexpert mover because you can trust their tension. The danger is that a heavy hand could damage the piano case. The advice is to ratchet up with one finger, and like the belt on your pants, you have enough tension when you can still slip a finger or two between the strap and the piano. NEVER use a strap on a piano without a blanket between it and the piano.

Conversely, insufficient tension will allow movement which could become exaggerated. The piano could ultimately work loose of its securings.

6) Screw drivers, pliers, and a soft faced mallet. Very often no tools at all will be needed for moving upright pianos. Grand pianos will always require some tools, to remove the legs, lyre, lid and lid hinges (in the USA they tend to use a flat skid board which does not require the lid to be removed. In Europe a shoe is used which does).

There are many situations in which manoeuvring an upright piano around corners requires the removal of the casters. Actually casters are another big subject: They are often seized, and should only be used for rolling a piano the last half inch back against a wall, should be placed on caster cups to avoid damage to the floor, and should never be used in the relocation of a piano.

7) Piano shoes and skids. These tools are a serious financial commitment. Their purpose is to provide a sacrificial surface against which to manoeuvre the piano; either onto a trolley, or up steps or along a board. As with all tools, cheap versions are available and should be avoided, since a tool which will betray you is a liability of immeasurable cost.

You can find more information about piano moving (including grand piano moving) on the student-movers-forum.com piano moving tips pages. The author’s website student-movers-forum.com offers a directory of services and moving advice for students and all small movers.

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Piano dollies, plain and simple, are tools used to move a piano. They take lots of shapes and sizes and can vary quite a bit in their actual function but the general concept is the same for all piano dollies – they move pianos.

Grand Piano Dollies in the shape of a spider are probably the most popular kind of piano dolly that exists. Most grand pianos at a church, club, music hall or hotel will need to be moved at some point. The grand piano dollies are spider like and extend from a central point out to each leg of a piano. They are installed by lifting each area around the leg of a grand piano, typically with a hydraulic lift, then by placing the dolly under the wheel. Once that task is completed for each wheel the mechanism is tightened and the piano dolly typically remains on the piano for life. The new wheel set is attractive, is out of the way of most of the people looking at the piano and makes it very easy to roll the piano to any new destination you desire to take it. The wheel can be locked when there is a desire to have the piano remain stationary for a time. The wheels are easily unlocked with a simple press of a toe against the clip on the wheel to free the brake.

Many schools have upright pianos that have a dolly permanently attached to the piano to make movement in the classroom much more manageable. Most pianos do not come with wheels so the dolly sets are important to allow teachers to have maximum control over classroom configuration.

For a professional mover of pianos, a piano dolly is a must. Pianos can weigh up to half a ton or more and they are large enough to cause injury if not moved properly. Piano dollies can help a single person to come to a house, pick up a piano and move it out of the house, down steps and into the moving truck. The piano dolly not only makes the job of moving a piano much easier, it makes it much quicker as well.

Piano Dolly sets can also come as simple caster wheels in hard plastic cups that are placed over the end of each of the legs of a piano. These type of dolly sets are much less expensive and can accomplish the same task of helping to roll the piano to another part of the room or building.

Chuck R Stewart owns and operates a top ranking web site to help people find a piano dolly to meet their needs called http://www.PianoDolly.com – The site specializes in offering a large range of piano dollies and piano moving equipment to fit any type of piano for every type of budget.

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When electricity and the light bulb came along it was not long afterward that the same issue with an electric light bulb arose. The light bulb was safer than the candle, to be sure, but the glare in the eyes of the piano player was rough on the eyes. The cover as placed on the front of the light bulb to reduce the glare and the piano lamp light fixture was a staple for anyone serious about playing a piano.

There have been some ultra-fancy piano lamps that are called candelabras. These are multi-light arrangements that typically sit on top of grand pianos. They are very formal and a little bit on the expensive side, costing $200 to $1,000 dollars depending upon the style you are interested in purchasing. The candelabra is attractive, as most piano lamps are, but the primary function of the lamp is still to display light on sheet music and the piano keyboard. They are not limited to use with grand pianos. Piano lamps fit well with console, studio and upright pianos.

While most piano lamps sit directly on top of the piano, several models are vertical lamps that raise from the floor. These models have advantages in that they can be arranged to display light from many angles at just about any height that the player wishes to have it be displayed. The common theme among different models of piano lamps is that they are all hooded to reduce the direct glare into the eyes of the player while lighting the keys of the piano. Many players purchase a piano lamp to further display their piano as a showcase of their house. They can be beautiful as well as being very functional.

Piano lamps come in many different styles and are made of many different materials. Brass and chrome are the most popular materials used to make a piano lamp but many enameled surfaces are used in the manufacturing process to allow for more affordability and style.

The shelf style (sits on top of the piano) piano lamp is usually height adjustable, and many feature a weighted base to allow for increased stability. Many times the base is made of a high quality material such as marble, to add beauty to the lamp as well as a great weight which serves the function. A very practical feature of a piano lamp is a counter-weighted arm, which most piano lamps have, preventing the lamp from getting top heavy regardless of its positional setting.

Piano lamps are manufactured to be either plug-in or battery-powered. Several companies also manufacture piano lamps that clip-on directly to the sheet music. An electric piano lamp is normally designed for either one or two light bulbs of 40-watts or less.

You can purchase these piano lamps at furnishing stores, music stores or online. The price in US dollars of a piano lamp can range from as low as forty to as high as hundreds of dollars.

From their very inception, piano lamps have replaced the need to use candles to provide light and add a nice mood to a piano recital or concert. Modern piano lamps are much safer and can be even more beautiful than the nicest candelabras from times of old.

Chuck R Stewart owns and operates a top ranking web site for piano lamps called http://www.PianoLamp.com

The site specializes in offering a wide variety of piano lamps to fit any type of piano for every type of budget.

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If you have ever tried to move a piano without the aid of a piano dolly you will certainly understand the need to have a tool to help you out. Pianos are huge, heavy and do not have convenient places to hold onto when transporting them. Pianos are also expensive and to risk damaging a leg of a grand piano or having an upright fall down on its side is too great to even consider. The final consideration, and any piano mover will tell you the most important, is that of safety. With pianos weighing sometimes as much as 1300 lbs, the people who move them need to be careful to not get injured. It simply is not practical for a human to pick up most models of pianos by hand. It is also not practical to try to drag a piano across a floor. The damage to the floor could be tremendous if you were to try. All of the reasons stated are why we have piano dollies.

Piano Dollies used to come with grand pianos in order to allow the instruments to be moved safely and easily from one area of the house or music room to another. Many older grand pianos found in homes around the world are on the dollies that came with their instrument and most people have thought that the wheels were actually part of the piano, not understanding that they could be removed, replaced and stored until the need to actually move a piano comes about.

A traditional style grand piano mover is a 3 legged spidery piece of equipment that folds up to be very compact for storage, easily fitting onto the side of a home closet or shelf. The tri-legged grand piano dolly expands by allowing the legs to unfold, straightening them out from the unit and then by extending the legs until they are directly under the legs of the grand piano. The arms are then tightened into place with a simple wrench used to tighten between 2 and 4 bolts. When purchasing a grand piano dolly it is best to know the measurements of the distances between the legs of the piano. The piano dollies come in different sizes in order to allow maximum strength to be maintained for smaller dolly sizes and for compact storage purposes. Many units will expand several inches, even feet, away from the base, but having a piano dolly that is too short will not serve the intended purpose and may leave you having to carry one leg by yourself.

A new grand piano mover has recently been introduced into the market that is much easier to setup and weighs less than traditional units, without sacrificing the strength needed to safely transport your piano. The new style of grand piano dolly also has fewer adjustments to make in order to use it. The spider-like design of traditional units has been replaced by a straight line conventional V-design making the unit simple to setup, take down and store.

One of my favorite products for grand pianos is the grand piano dolly wheel set. This affordable set of wheel is a strong caster wheel set that holds the leg of the grand piano safely in the caster cup allowing the piano to have wheels that are durable and provide a smooth ride. This solution is great for people who do not need to move their piano far and who do not have any terrain types of issues. The negative for this product is that it can cause strain on the piano legs and the piano sits 1-2 inches higher when in the wheel set.

Upright piano dollies come in two styles – short caster-wheel based dollies that fit under each side of the upright piano from front to rear wheel or complete upright piano dolly units that sit the entire piano atop the dolly. The advantage of the wheel-only design is that they are less expensive and easier to install. The wheel units provide a solid temporary solution to moving an upright piano. The advantage of the complete dolly that has the piano sitting completely atop it is that it provides a more permanent wheel base. Most schools and churches use these types of dollies to hold their upright pianos, organs and console pianos to make them available for quick movement when a different configuration is required.

Lightweight piano dollies are available for digital pianos and keyboard sets that are less expensive, made of lighter material and are extremely easy to setup. I was able to setup a digital piano dolly in less than 5 minutes after removing it from the box – it had a very nice design.

In short, there is something for every type of piano to help relieve the burden of moving a large, heavy instrument either across the room or across the world.

Chuck R Stewart owns and operates a top ranking web site to help people find a piano dolly to meet their needs called http://www.PianoDolly.com – The site specializes in offering a large range of piano dollies and piano moving equipment to fit any type of piano for every type of budget.

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