Mid-Century Captured in a Piano

A Baldwin Acrosonic Scandinavian Model 947 spinet piano taken out of storage in preparation for an inspection prior to being shipped to a client.

For the inaugural blog post of Pianos & Pets, we have this very special 1960’s Baldwin Scandinavian Natural Walnut 947 Acrosonic that I had the pleasure of performing an inspection and repairs on for a remote client. For such a long name, the piano stands only 36” tall thanks to it being a spinet piano.

Baldwin produced and sold a lot of spinets post World War II and they were popular because of their small size and low price point. Spinets were affordable to more people and sales of them skyrocketted.

View of the drop action in the Baldwin Scandinavian Natural Walnut 947 Acrosonic. Here you can see the action that is normally above the keyboard in larger uprights is below.

They are, however, a pain in the bum to service for piano technicians because the action is extremely inaccessible due to their drop-action design.

Despite this I tune and service a lot of spinet pianos – despite the halting of production of these style of pianos mostly by the mid 1980s and completely halted by early 1990s – and a majority of them are Baldwin Acrosonics. None are as visually striking as the Scandinavian Natural Walnut. Trystcraft has an amazing article about the Mid-Century design of this piano and even has photos of the original newspaper advertisements for them.

According to Trystcraft, the piano sold for $1195 when it was first made, which is equivalent to $10,500 in today’s money. Surprisingly, you can still occasionally find specimens on eBay for nearly that same kind of money.

Today, when pianos are not so much being bought to be a piece of furniture like they were in decades past, this one certainly would have fit perfectly alongside your Mid-Century Modern entertainment console.

Andrew is available to tune and service your piano.
Call or text (619) 909-7724