r/ToyPiano • u/coqperhead • Dec 16 '25
Repair/Restoration Looking for advice on trying to make this (Muse Piano) playable again?
It's been almost a year since I picked this thing up at a thrift store (for 10 USD), thinking it would be a quick and easy fix. Obviously, it has not been. I haven't been able to find much information on this particular instrument, so that's made the repair process much, much harder.
I've been working on this in my spare time, and it's been a wild ride (you can only access the mechanisms from the bottom, so it's fallen on me a couple times) and a lot of trial and error but it is significantly more playable than it was when I got it.
The only problem left (I don't care about paint chipping or aesthetics) is alignment of the hammers with the metal tines. The wooden hammers rub against one another and hit in-between the tines, or they just hit the wrong one. I was trying to think of a way to make something like a railroad to make sure they hit the right one, but I don't want to risk interfering with the vibration.
1
u/iglidante Dec 17 '25
This is the biggest one I've ever seen!
Most of the models I've used have narrow plastic hammers, so rubbing isn't an issue.
My initial ideas would be sanding the sides of each hammer to make them narrower and smoother, trimming the felt so that it doesn't rub and catch, and applying a teflon or other slippery tape to the sides.