Many older pianos have ivories that are chipped, worn, badly yellowed or stained, or even missing. We are frequently asked if the ivories on an older piano can be replaced.
While the restrictions in the ivory trade make it impossible to replace keytops with real ivory, (and new pianos today do not come with ivory keys) we have had beautiful results with replacing the keytops with a plastic material like that used on recently manufactured pianos.
Why replace an entire set if only a few keys are worn or missing? Because performance of the piano depends upon the keys being of a uniform height, and replacing just a few keytops invariably results in unevenness in key level. It also results in the keys having a different “feel”, which affects the playability of the piano. For this reason, we generally recommend replacing the entire set of keytops if some of the tops are missing or worn. The results are astonishing, as you can see:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
