Yep, and this is why 
Si
Q.E.D. (and the others posting similar recommendations afterwards) is 110% correct. When we had our Steinway full-sized grand piano moved up two flights of stairs, it was quickly and easily moved by two men with huge fabric straps around their necks and shoulders. I don’t know what was more amazing - the fact that the piano, according to Steinway’s website, weighed more than 800 pounds - or the fact that the two guys moving it seemed to, together, outweigh the piano - all in muscle. :eek:
Okay, this is a bit of a hijack, but it is related. I’m an EMT for a private ambulance service, meaning we transport people between hospitals, and back home from the hospital.
I’m not an engineer, and I never took physics in high school.
I spend one or two days a week on Bariatric duty, which means moving patients who weigh over 300 pounds. My company regularly transports several dialysis patients who weigh over 400 pounds.
We don’t just walk in there and say, “Gee, what’s the easiest way to haul this 350-pound person?” It takes training and practice to do it without hurting yourself, your partner or the patient. We have a variety of tools to help us, including hover mats, comfort slings and a specially-designed stretcher. Most of the time, the very obese patients are disabled and cannot move themselves, and cannot even scoot over to the stretcher, so we have to do it all. We then have to lift the stretcher into the ambulance, and move the patient again when we get to the destination.
At my company, we also have an electric stretcher, which moves up and down under its own power - and you have to be trained to use it. We also have ‘lifting’ reviews every so often. Remember, it’s all in the legs. Squat and lift. Never bend over and try to lift. You’ll blow out your back.
I’d be pissed if someone stood there and told me how to move a patient, unless I knew they were a fellow EMT or paramedic. I know how to do it; I’ve had training and experience. You wanna step in and try and tell me how to do it, just because you’ve taken high school physics and I haven’t? Don’t even think about it.
- And with a live person, you have to be doubly careful. I would think when moving a piano, you could grunt and groan and complain about how much it weighs, but when you’re moving another human being, you can’t bitch and moan about how much he or she weighs till you’re well out of ear shot.
Actually, the trickiest part of moving a grand piano is removing/replacing the legs. That’s where damage is most likely to occur. The body is normally wrapped in moving pads and strapped so that damage is unlikely when moving it about.
I would rather move a grand than an upright, most uprights are top heavy.
What, you’re not going to hire a bunch of physics graduate students to move your piano? I’m sure they’ll run all the necessary simulations to come with an optimax solution. “Oops, I guess we needed more than a linear first-order approximation to the inertia tensor, and I think we exceeded Fred’s stress-energy limit. Do you think we can stick that back on with some Crazy Glue?”
I’m sure it’s all due to a bug in SciLab. 
Stranger
Okay, so if you’ve hired G&R to move your piano, feel free to offer them your advice.
(What a terrible thing to happen to a Bosendorfer! It hurts to look at those pictures.)
Here’s another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhIFfasz6Ec
and another : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAP6DtKtFKA
and another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdutZ-8XnVA
This is what our mover said. There’s some sort of trick with the legs, he referred to it as “crippling” the piano in just the right way that it collapses juuuuust right on the special wheeled dolly for pianos. He said that grand pianos weren’t nearly has hard as they looked, but uprights were a nightmare. You just have to learn how to do the legs right.
Without their legs, grands are significantly thinner than full-size uprights, thus you can strap them to a piano board and negotiate them through narrower areas. Even if they’re heavier, they’re easier to handle.
If they drop it…you can always take up the kazoo!
If that happens, he’ll probably feel he took it up the wazoo. 
Ever thought of getting a keyboard synthesizer?
The OP reminds me of a customer I had once. Poindexter had a Volvo that among other things, had a driver’s widow regulator that was out of adjustment. In addition, I noticed that someone in the past had plugged in the windows switches wrong (hit the right front, the left rear would operate).
So I tell Poindexter that the window regulator was out of adjustment, and the cost to repair that was .3 of an hour ($18 at the then current labor rate) in addition, I mentioned that I would correct the mis-wiring of the window switches for no charge.
Did I mention that Poindexter was an electrical engineer?
He proceeds to fly off the handle that he is not going to pay me for this and proceeds out to the car (in my stall btw) to fix it himself.
I wish I had a video of the next 20 minutes. Watching this guy trying to remove the door panel was like watching a monkey fuck a football.
I stood there behind the car like this :eek: in awe. He had all the manual dexterity of a bear cub with a hard on.
After 10 minutes he had the door panel off, broken I might add. This takes a slow mechanic about 45 seconds. He then spent almost 5 minutes trying to figure out which wiring connector goes to which switch. Again this would have taken a non EE about 45 seconds.
The remainder of the time was spent trying to secure the remains of the door panel back in place, with greater or lesser success.
When he was done, He stood up and said in a very condescending tone "See I didn’t have to pay you $18 for that.
My reply? "Well sir, you still have not adjusted the window regulator which is what I was charging for. So the original problem still exists. The fixing of the window switches was going to be for free while I was in there fixing the window. In addition you have broken a $250 door panel in half. Somehow I am not seeing how you have saved any money here. Perhaps you could explain it to me.
Him: :eek: :smack: 
Stand back and let the pros do their job.
I love the British understatement in the sudheadline: “A concert grand piano valued at £45,000 is thought to have been wrecked after falling off a removal lorry in Devon.”
But officer, it was like that when we put it on the lorry.
And, yeah, I winced when I saw the picture.
Hmm…that sounds like a useful thing. That is, if you need to regulate the widows of drivers. However, I understand that Volvos are particularly known for their safety mechanisms and are therefore less conducive to the production of widows than other makes, so perhaps you should work on another brand.
I did a construction job once involving the installation of new rafters and longerons in a barn. The owner of the barn was very sure of himself and despite the work being done to code and standard practice wanted to argue about various aspects of the work at hand, proclaiming himself to be a “certified engineer”. After considerable jawing with the foreman who had exhausted all of his rational arguments he called me over, declaring, “Well, this guy is an engineering student and maybe he can explain to you why you’re full of shit!” (Thanks, boss; do I get a raise for this?) As it turned out, this “certified engineer” (whatever that is) has some serious difficulty with the overly complex analytical geometry he used, and also not a single clue about how rafters are cut and longerons are attached to support a roof. After more discussion, he agreed to let us do it our way, “but if it falls in you’re going to pay to replace it!” Needless to say, it didn’t fall in (despite being constructed by a crew of mostly drunks and meth-heads; do I get a raise for this?) and I went on to take a very dim view of people who claim expertise in areas of practical workmanship where they have no actual experience. One does not need a degree in physics–nor would it be especially useful–for the execution of common acts of physical acumen such as piano lifting.
Stranger
This is very true.
Years ago my (then) roommate saw an ad for an upright for sale for a ridiculously low price, located about four blocks from where we lived. For some reason I was busy doing something fun like studying for a law school exam, so he and his brother went to pick up the piano in his pickup truck.
They were about two blocks away when they took a corner just a bit too fast. I knew what had happened instantly. There aren’t many things that sound quite like an upright piano rolling over the side of a pickup truck.
OK, I’ll bite. You are the rocket scientist, I’m not. So just what is the term you would use to describe the left front side window of a left hand drive automobile? Driver’s window is what we in the auto industry use.
Once we are past that, the question becomes what do you call the device that regulates the height of said window? Again in the auto industry window regulator is the accepted term.
So if we are talking about the window height regulating mechanism of the left front side window of a left hand driver automobile what is it’s proper name?
I’ll wait.
Pssst. Rick. You missed an “n” in the post that Stranger quoted. 
Since I suspect we may never hear from the OP again, and may not get a 100% unbiased account if we do, I’d love to hear from the movers who are bringing his piano and get their version of how the move went, what he said, and what they did.
Maybe they dropped it on him.