Rushworth & Dreaper

sokrat · Post by **sokrat** » 01 Feb 2008, 13:01

Hi! I have a Rushworth & Dreaper piano and i am getting really frustrated as I can not find any clue to how old it is. Yes, I have red everything that has been so far written about R&D on this forum but it is no more then a skeleton of R&D company history. So please: anyone who has a R&D piano and has any clue of its age or anyone who knows anything about their serial numbers, what kind of wood their pianos were made of, where were they made (besides Liverpool)... just ANYTHING! I will be extremly grateful for any information!

Post by **Bill Kibby** » 01 Feb 2008, 19:36

I am already dealing with this one by email, but no original archives are available to look up these pianos.

Sanjeewa · Post by **Sanjeewa** » 27 Feb 2008, 20:50

sokrat wrote:Hi! I have a Rushworth & Dreaper piano and i am getting really frustrated as I can not find any clue to how old it is. Yes, I have red everything that has been so far written about R&D on this forum but it is no more then a skeleton of R&D company history. So please: anyone who has a R&D piano and has any clue of its age or anyone who knows anything about their serial numbers, what kind of wood their pianos were made of, where were they made (besides Liverpool)... just ANYTHING! I will be extremly grateful for any information!

Hi, I am from Sri Lanka and my family has owned a Rushworth and Dreaper piano for 4 generations now. It was bought brand new in the first half of the 1930s; it is a 6 octave model (as opposed to the full octave range) and it sounds pretty aweful...more like a honkeytonk. It's also tuned to a completely different pitch than standard pitch (I have no idea why), C corresponds with A in standard tuning. I am guessing your piano must be roughly the same age. The admin has posted about Rushworth pianos on http://www.uk-piano.org/piano-forums/vi ... =rushworth, but I don't know where he got the info since I can't find anything like that on the web about the company ever having made pianos for more than a few years.

athomik · Post by **athomik** » 28 Feb 2008, 11:33

Hi, I am from Sri Lanka and my family has owned a Rushworth and Dreaper piano for 4 generations now. It was bought brand new in the first half of the 1930s; it is a 6 octave model (as opposed to the full octave range) and it sounds pretty aweful...more like a honkeytonk.

Anybody ever thought of getting it tuned?

Post by **Bill Kibby** » 28 Feb 2008, 12:07

Rushworth & Dreaper were in business separately until about 1905, when they combined to become the company which is still in business. Their website is

http://www.musiclink.co.uk/rushworths/

However, their email doesn't seem to work!

Sanjeewa · Post by **Sanjeewa** » 05 Mar 2008, 04:26

athomik wrote:
Hi, I am from Sri Lanka and my family has owned a Rushworth and Dreaper piano for 4 generations now. It was bought brand new in the first half of the 1930s; it is a 6 octave model (as opposed to the full octave range) and it sounds pretty aweful...more like a honkeytonk.
Anybody ever thought of getting it tuned?

It's tuned well enough..it's more to do with the voicing I think. And since it's what would be called a "budget" piano, and has apparantly sounded the same since the day one, there's nothing to be done.

CherryAnnKnott · Post by **CherryAnnKnott** » 17 May 2011, 22:51

There is a Rushworth & Dreaper upright 'grand' piano in our family. It was bought new for our father in Liverpool in 1929; still has excellent tone. It would take some time to check reference numbers, but could do so sometime in the next few weeks if helpful.
Regards
C A Knott

Sanjeewa · Post by **Sanjeewa** » 18 May 2011, 12:53

CherryAnnKnott wrote:There is a Rushworth & Dreaper upright 'grand' piano in our family. It was bought new for our father in Liverpool in 1929; still has excellent tone. It would take some time to check reference numbers, but could do so sometime in the next few weeks if helpful.
Regards
C A Knott

Feel free to post it in your own time and I'll compare it with mine, let's see what we find out

c_a_parker · Post by **c_a_parker** » 21 Jun 2013, 11:29

Just stumbled across this on google when looking for some information on Rushworth and Dreaper as a company. I realise the posts are quite some time ago. This may or may not help and you may already know this.

We have a 1936 (I think) Rushworth and Dreaper upright and I used to take the piano apart as a child.. Anyway, it is well over twenty years now since I last took the piano apart but I remember there is a sticker underneath the lowest bass keys. I remember it being about 3-4 keys up from the lowest bass note. So not sure if this is a standard trait for all Rushworth and Dreaper piano's but the sticker has the date on it. Sorry I can't remember what other information it had.

Carl.

Post by **Bill Kibby** » 28 Jun 2013, 20:04

Thanks, that's what part of my page is about at

http://www.pianohistory.info/datemarks.html

Post by **Gill the Piano** » 29 Jun 2013, 18:00

Bill Kibby wrote:I am already dealing with this one by email, but no original archives are available to look up these pianos.

Bill, I tune for a Rushworth from the company family; do you want me to ask him if the family has kept any piano records?

Post by **Bill Kibby** » 30 Jun 2013, 00:04

Of course, anything they have may be interesting, but life being the way it is, I don't hold out much hope.

Post by **Bill Kibby** » 21 Sep 2013, 12:56

For reasons that are beyond me, Carl's new posting has appeared in completely the wrong place in this sequence. Thanks, the sticker you refer to is probably a key-frame label, as described at
http://www.pianohistory.info/datemarks.html

These are quite commonly found in many different pianos, but I hope the people who see my links will have looked, or at least asked their tuners to look.

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