Cleaning the Baldwin harpsichord

Some people's Saturday night consisted of fine dining, socializing, or maybe a wild night of partying and drinking. Mine, on the other hand, consisted of vacuuming a harpsichord. The Baldwin arrived last week and was pretty filthy - dust cakes, grimy keys, German 10 pfenning coin in the strings (you know you have too much gear when this doesn't even phase you). So the first order of business was to give it an initial scrubbing.

The easiest place to start was the plexiglass. The music stand and soundboard cover are held on by a few thumbscrews. I removed these and separated the music stand rail from the backing. Everything was scrubbed with all-purpose Windex and set aside (if you look at last week's pics, the plexiglass was definitely contributing some of the filthy appearance).

Next up were the grimy keys. I again took the all-purpose Windex, plus a box of Q-tips, and went to work one key at a time. Each key looked like someone had vomited on it (and maybe this was the case - old gear has such an air of mystery). I didn't feel like removing the keybed, so I just got around all sides of the keys as best I could. The result looks practically brand new and was definitely worth the effort.


At this point I went over all the body (which is metal with some kind of textured black paint) with Windex and paper towels. I even got the Q-tips back out and cleaned the layer of dust behind the tuning pins (you'll notice the 10 pfenning piece is now removed). Finally, I went over the legs with Old English scratch cover / polish. Here is a picture of the Baldwin tonight, looking much cleaner than when it arrived: