[CAUT] pin block strangeness

[Christopher Purdy]

I ran into a new one the other day.  A local dealer has pianos made for 
them by Dong Bei in China.  I was asked to make a service call on a 
small grand that was sold to a church.  This was my first encounter 
with one of these pianos.  The local tuner was having trouble with 
tuning stability and they asked me to have a go at it.

Overall, it looked fairly well built and pin torque was very 
consistent.  String rendering had a mushy feel to it but I was able to 
set pins.  It seemed stable while I tuned and sounded like a million 
bucks when I was finished.  The other tuner had told the dealer that 
the piano was going out of tune even while he was working on it so I 
was very meticulous with my tuning and was looking everywhere for an 
answer.

Then I found something that blew me away.  I checked the pin block fit 
and found that the block does not even touch the flange, at any point.  
Not only could I put a business card in the gap, bass to treble, but 
there was a huge gap.  I could have put the thickness of three or four 
cards in it with no problem.

The previous tuner had just tuned the piano eight days before and when 
I got there the treble was a good 25 cents sharp.  I do not know this 
tuner so I can't speculate about his experience. I asked a ton of 
questions about humidity and temperature fluctuations and I gather that 
it has been pretty stable.  They do not turn off the heat during the 
week, etc.   I am going back this week to check my tuning.  I can't 
imagine it's going to be stable with no attempt whatsoever at pin block 
fitting.

Have any of you seen anything like this?  I know there is a lot of 
griping about the pianos coming out of China but the rest of the piano 
really looked fairly well made.  The piano is named Steinhauer and is 
made exclusively for this dealer.  I would be very interested in 
hearing any experiences you may have had like this.  If I go back there 
and my tuning is FUBAR I am going to have to condemn this bird.  I have 
a good relationship with this dealer but I smell trouble.

Mitch, have you dealt with any of these yet?

Chris