I used to play semi-regularly on a piano of very poor quality.  However, I did come up with a viable solution.  It was a good news/bad news situation.  The strings on the bottom octave were really  weak, and sounded frayed.  However, though it really had lost much of a low timbre, it did sound more like an old standup, acoustic bass fiddle, so I did a lot of walking bass.  It was certainly passable.  I also played a lot of stride style piano, giving a Fats Waller and James P. Johnson feel to the music.  The tunes seemed to go over well with the crowd.