Piano Movers Calgary Uprights, Grands & Antiques

Calgary Pro Movers moves uprights, baby grands and concert grands with proper boards, skids and strapping rather than a dolly and hope. Most upright moves are a two to three hour job at $140 per hour; grands take longer because the legs and lyre come off. Call (587) 602-9631 for a quote on your instrument.

Weight is the obvious part. Uprights run 130 to 180 kg and grands can exceed 450 kg. The parts people underestimate are what actually cause damage. The weight is unevenly distributed, sitting over the keyboard end and the plate, so lifting wrong means it doesn’t tip gradually, it goes suddenly.

The legs and pedal lyre are structural but fragile: on a grand they’re designed to hold weight vertically, not to be dragged or knocked laterally, and a leg shearing at the block is where most amateur piano damage happens. Internally, the soundboard, plate and 200-plus strings sit under enormous combined tension, and sharp impacts can affect the bridge or crack a soundboard. Damage you may not discover until it’s tuned.

Uprights go on a piano dolly with the keyboard side protected, blanket-wrapped and strapped, and onto a piano board with two to four movers for stairs. Grands come apart properly: lid closed and locked, pedal lyre removed, legs removed one at a time as the instrument is lowered onto a padded skid board, then wrapped and strapped on its straight side. Reassembly is the same sequence in reverse.

Most of the difficulty is the route, not the instrument. Before quoting we want to know the number of steps and whether there’s a turn or landing, doorway widths on the path, whether there’s a bookable elevator, and in winter whether the walkway will be iced. Send a couple of photos with your quote request. Afterwards, wait two to four weeks before tuning so the instrument acclimatizes. Tuning the day after a move means paying for it twice.

A piano is not simply heavy. An upright runs 130 to 320 kg and a concert grand can pass 500 kg, but the weight is the easy part. The problem is that the mass sits high and unevenly, and the structure that matters (the plate, the pin block, the soundboard) is under something like eighteen tonnes of accumulated string tension and does not tolerate being twisted.

That is why a piano gets a board rather than a dolly. An upright is tipped onto a piano board, strapped along its length and moved as a rigid unit, so the case never carries a shear load through a doorway or a stair turn. A grand is different work again: the lid is closed and secured, the lyre and pedals come off, the legs come off in sequence, and the instrument travels on its side on a padded skid, never upright on its own legs.

Done wrong, the damage is rarely a scratch you can buff out. It is a cracked soundboard, a broken leg block, or a case knocked out of square, and on a good instrument the repair costs more than the move by an order of magnitude.

Three details set the price and the plan, and we would much rather have them at quoting time than discover them on the day.

Stairs. Count them, and tell us whether there is a landing with a turn. A straight flight is manageable. A half-turn landing on a 1950s Calgary bungalow is the single most common reason a piano move needs a fourth person, and occasionally the reason it cannot be done at all through that route.

The approach. Narrow front paths, a step down to a walkout, gravel, or a steep driveway all change the equipment. Winter changes it again: we salt and lay runners before an instrument crosses any outdoor surface between November and March.

Tuning. Expect to have the piano tuned after it moves, and expect to wait. A piano needs two to four weeks to settle into the humidity and temperature of the new room before a tuning will hold. Booking a tuner for the day after delivery wastes the appointment. This is normal and it is not damage. Every piano goes out of tune when it changes rooms, however carefully it travelled.