Hi all, no birds, but a couple of peculiar things. Vose and Sons grand: 150cm (4'11"), sn 95626. Poorly rebuilt ( worst stringing job I've seen in years), and the guy left the masking tape on the bottom of the soundboard after he filled the cracks. It had since petrified nicely. Anyway, I thought the ribs were interesting. Eight of them fanned backward from about 80° to the belly rail in the bass (#1 @ 950mm), to about 60° in the treble (#8), with the panel grain angle at a more "usual" 45°. I didn't check crown or bearing, for lack of remaining ambition and life force (did 8 that day - agh!). It sounded like any other 4'11" poorly rebuilt old piano, so I couldn't say that the rib configuration improved or hampered anything. I just thought it was interesting. Charles Walter vertical: Finally got to tune one of these critters. Nice piano, good scale, pleasant sound, tuned real pretty. A couple of things caught my attention. It seems that the designer squeezed and pried, possibly muttered some too, to get the last millimeter of bass string length into the available space. The hitch pins are below the top of the bottom board, and the string angle is as far over as the case width would allow. That puts that first bass agraffe way up in the upper left to get the strike point right on that long string, and that didn't leave a good place for the tuning pin. Consequently, the string angle going through the agraffe is maybe 80°! I could feel that string grunching (technical term) through the agraffe when I pulled it to pitch. Made me want to retrofit an idler pulley to decrease the angle. How long before that sucker pops when I try to move it? Has anyone had any trouble with this in these pianos? Other than that one thing, I was pretty impressed with the piano. Just out of curiosity, and not that it matters, who designed this one? Ron N
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