Restoration
We restore instruments by any maker, ours or another's, to run rather than merely to look restored.
A restoration begins with a running report, not a quote. The instrument spends a week on the stand doing whatever it still does, and we write down what it does, when it stops, and what we hear. You get that report whether or not you go ahead.
The rule on the bench is that a restoration must be reversible wherever honest work allows. Original surfaces are kept unless they threaten the mechanism. Replaced parts are marked with the year and the maker's initials, and the provenance card records every one of them.
The queue runs about four months, and the work takes as long as it takes. We have returned instruments whose owners had given up on them thirty years earlier, and we have turned down two jobs we could not do properly, which we count among the better decisions of the last decade.
Restored instruments return to the stand first
What a restoration covers
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Running report | One week on the stand; a written account of what the instrument still does. |
| Mechanism | Arbors trued, pallets re-stoned, chains re-linked, wheels re-cut where honesty allows. |
| Surface | Cleaning only where the metal is suffering. Original tone kept unless it threatens the work. |
| Records | Every replaced part marked, dated, and entered on the provenance card. |
| Return | Eighteen weeks on the stand after the work, same as a new instrument. |