With over 30 years experience in restoring and maintaining pianos Toby tells us where it all began. 

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For as long as I can remember I had a fascination with the piano.  

 

From around the age of three I was pestering my parents for a piano, the local teacher would not start pupils until they were six, so I had to wait.

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On my sixth my first real piano arrived, a "G.P Woodhouse London" upright piano, I loved this piano. Today I am the proud owner of a K.Kawai baby grand.

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When I was very young I loved going through encyclopaedias, here I learnt a lot about pianos and how they work.  

 

In my teenage years I was given some old DIY books showing how to mend pianos, this collection of old books soon built up and by the age of sixteen I was able to mend the old worn out piano in the village hall.

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When I was sixteen I did work experience at a local piano workshop, I learnt a lot in this time.

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At the age of I eighteen I went to what was "The London College of Furniture" to study piano restoration and tuning properly.   Whilst here as part of our studies I arranged a visit to Steinway and Sons to the restoration workshop in Park Royal London (now moved) and was very fortunate to get a job as an apprentice with Steinway & Sons in London, this helped build a strong relationship with Steinways.

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Whilst at Steinways I often had a piano I was working on at home, so after a few years and being made redundant from Steinways I continued buying pianos to repair then sell.   This lead to starting my own piano restoration business.  Here I was restoring pianos for customers and selling pianos.   

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Things have changed a lot since the early days of the business, today I mainly deal with younger pianos or high end older pianos, though customer repairs are still welcome.

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When tuning pianos I was often asked about teaching so I decided to offer this as well.

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Playing the piano never stopped, and when playing after tuning I found myself being asked to play for functions and now I also play piano professionally in the London Hotels such as The Ritz, Savoy and many more places like Fortnum & Mason.

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The core value remains which is to provide quality pianos, piano tuning and piano repairs.