(No wisecracks please.) I went to a house yesterday to tune an "old upright". On arriving I found it was an "old English", but not a "birdcage" - the dampers were in the now standard location. I checked a few pins for tightness and they seemed ok. C5 was very close to my tuning fork, but a couple of semitones in the area of D4 to B4 sounded more like unisons. On further examination here's what I found: In the area below the tuning pins, which were in an open-faced pin block, there was no V bar or agraffes, but rather what looked like another bridge with stagger pins. Actually, the notes below D4 (as I remember) had only one stagger pin, but the upper section had two, just like we normally find below at the bridge. The wood in the affected section had split along the line of the lower pins and the pins had shifted to the left, thus allowing the strings also to shift and not be aligned with the hammer. I showed and explained all this to the understanding, young Phillipine lady, apologizing for having to charge her for the visit and not being able to tune her piano. She said she would start looking to buy a more modern used piano because she wants to play, and she hopes her 4 year old daughter will start learning too in a year or so. Now my question: Does anyone specialize in fixing up old English pianos? They are such pretty things, but seem to all have some internal problems. This one seems "fixable". It's a shame to let such a nice looking and potentially adequately functioning piano go to waste. Is there any repair facility in the USA, especially the East Coast, that takes old English pianos and makes them useable again? Wally Scherer, Piano Technician, Norfolk, Virginia, USA Associate member of the PTG, Hampton Roads, Va. chapter mailto:WallyTS@iName.com Web page: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/2411 "Old piano tuners don't die - they just go beatless!"
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