Today was a very tiring day... Several days ago I received a phone call from a local resident. His name was Jose, and in his crude English I understood him to say that he had a piano in his garage and he wanted to give it away. "Is it a grand piano or an upright piano?" I asked. Having dealt with so many "free" junk pianos, I was very skeptical. He indicated that it was a grand but didn't know much about it. I asked him if he knew what brand. He said that it was a Conover. He could not give me any additional information. I am rather fond of the Conover model "88". It is a well built piano and closely resembles the Mason & Hamlin "A" in multiple aspects. They have an excellent tone with a strong bass. I was excited at the thought of possibly getting a free Conover "88". When I arrived I was overjoyed to learn that it was indeed a model "88". Then the bomb fell. He wasn't looking for someone to give the piano to. He wanted to give away "the parts". Huh?????? As it turned out he was the leader of a salsa band. What he really wanted was to gut the piano of the action and plate and then install a digital keyboard in the case. His intent was to have a "grand piano look" on the stage yet something that could be easily broken down to move to the next gig. Sheesh! Here was this beautiful gem of a piano, certainly worthy of restoration, and all he wanted was to butcher it so that he could have a "grand piano look"! I hesitated for a moment trying to think of something to say. In desperation all I could come up with was, "I think that there could be other pianos more suited for your needs. Let me see if I can come up with a solution for you." Then half way down the driveway it hit me. I have another client, "Richard", who lives on the other side of town. Richard is a 71 year old jazz musician who recently moved to Las Vegas from the Bay area. He brought an old Wurlitzer grand with him which quickly deteriorated in the dry desert. When he called me to come and take a look at it the pins were so loose that you could practically turn them by hand. The rest of the piano reflected similar conditions, although the case did look fairly decent. Richard needed a playable piano but had very little money to spend on one. I admittedly felt a bit sorry for him, and I told him that I would keep an eye out for a decent cheap piano. So the connection was there; Jose needed a stage prop but had a beautiful Conover that I wanted, and Richard had a useless grand that needed to be disposed. I presented the idea to Jose. He was hesitant but agreed to look at the Wurlitzer. On my way home I called Richard. He agreed to the arrangement but reiterated his need for a playable piano. I agreed that I would find him one if he would be a little patient. Next I approached the dealer that I do PianoDisc work for. I was told that "there might be something in the warehouse that could be salvaged". I took the chance. I arranged a time for Jose' to look at Richard's piano the next morning. Then another problem. The following morning Richard calls me and says he forgot that he had an appointment. But Jose was on his way, and I had no way to change the time! Richard agreed to leave the key with the management of his apartment. So Jose arrives... and the manager is gone! Needless to say this did not help my relations department, and Jose' was becoming irritated. Through another series of events we rearranged a meeting later in the day. It finally worked, and Jose viewed the piano. He seemed very unenthusiastic, and I pretty much gave up on the effort. Then to my total shock, Jose calls me at 7:30 that evening saying that he wanted the piano! The catch of course was that he wanted $500.00, the amount that he supposedly paid for the Conover, (so he says). I agreed. So here's how it works: In order to get the Conver "88" I had to provide Jose a substitute piano. To do this I needed Richard's Wurlitzer. But in order to get the Wurlitzer I needed to get Richard a playable piano from the music dealer's used stash in the warehouse. Then I would have to make Richard's new piano playable and gut the plate and action out of his old one. Following that I would have to rent a trailer to move it to Jose's house. Then I would need to load up the Conover to take it to my house, all before any parties involved had the chance to change their mind! I consulted Alan Meyer, my partner with whom I install PianoDiscs. He will be joining me on the rebuilding shop venture and ultimately helping in the restoration job of the Conover 88 in question. Early this morning I rented the trailer and met Alan at Richard's house. In his living room we completely gutted the Wurlitzer, plate, action, strings and all. This of course took two hours longer than expected, and I would have to inform Jose that we would be late. Naturally I lost the paper with the phone number, so now I risked irritating the fragile agreement. We continued the dissection of the Wurlitzer. As we loaded it up we discovered that the piano would barely clear the roof of the trailer. We also loaded up the plate which we now needed to find a place to ditch. Suddenly I found Jose's number. I called him and he was cool so off we went. We arrived at Jose's house and unloaded the now extremely light Wurlitzer case with ease and prepared to load up the Conover. Surprise! Jose had already made an effort to remove the plate of the Conover and had loosened and/or removed all the plate bolts and screws... under full tension! We quickly locked them all down again with no further incident. After getting the massively heavy beast on the skid board, however, (he had it laying on bare concrete), it made some pretty awful creaking sounds, so we stopped and took the tension off the plate. Next we rolled it out to the trailer only to discover that it was too darn tall to fit inside! Thinking creatively we decided to heave the massive thing into the back of Alan's pick up. I won't go into the details on how we did this, but fair it said that it was not fun. To complicate matters Alan had to be at the Golden Gate casino by 4:00 for a tuning gig involving a recording, and it was getting late. We carefully and slowly made our way to my house. Alan had to get to the Golden gate immediately, only this huge beast was on his little pick-up. We quickly unhitched the trailer from MY truck so that he could use it to get to his gig. In the meantime I had to move a mountain of stuff in my garage to make room for the piano. Two and a half hours later Alan returned. To get the piano off the truck we needed to stack a huge pile of plywood up to build a ramp, (I live in a rural area and there are no curbs to back up to). Amazingly we managed to unload the thing and get it in the garage. Whew!!!!!!!!! What you have to go through to get an unplayable piano to rebuild! Now I still have to get Richard a piano which I will have to make playable without charge to him! Oh, I still have a Wurlitzer plate to get rid of. Rob Goodale, RPT Las Vegas, NV
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