Can You Scrap Pianos?

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

was it a hammond? If so there is a small wire in them that is palladium. Make sure to get that wire.

I've found palladium in a lot of organs besides Hammond. when a key is depressed it makes contact with a very long wire, the palladium is on the key side a this business. It is the palladium wire from the key that makes contact with the wire.

The palladium wire is smaller in diameter than a human hair, about 1/4 inch long attached to every key mechanism near the end that comes into contact with those long wires., A sharp knife will peel them off.

Originally Posted by gustavus

I've found palladium in a lot of organs besides Hammond. when a key is depressed it makes contact with a very long wire, the palladium is on the key side a this business. It is the palladium wire from the key that makes contact with the wire.

The palladium wire is smaller in diameter than a human hair, about 1/4 inch long attached to every key mechanism near the end that comes into contact with those long wires., A sharp knife will peel them off.

I found a Langley piano after reading this thread. The individual key wires were magnetic.
They contacted onto a wire that run the length of the keyboard (it had 3 'cuts' in it, making it actually 4 wires)

That wire was a total of 640mm long, 1 mm dia & weighed 6.2 grams.
It looks 'silvery', much like the 'silver containing' copper pipe welding rod (for use with a gas welding torch) it has a tinge of copper in it, not a 'white metal' like silver actually is.
The welding wire i have has thin lines down its length, so I don't think they just used the welding wire as a contact wire.

I put it aside until I figure out what it actually is, it dosn't melt over a BIC lighter flame, dosen't even get red, just covered in soot.

There was 4 other wires, like the individual key wires, that were soldered from the board to the silvery wires, looks like stainless steel, non magnetic.