An interesting spinet

[Farrell]

I serviced a G. Steck console from the 40s a few weeks ago. It sticks in my mind as being an exceptionally well built instrument and quite reasonable to tune. I recall it had a nice full perimeter plate.

Quite different from the 1960s mouse-infested, mouse-poop-stuck keys, original owner, "only tuned once when we first bought it", Aeolian spinet. Most of the keyboard ranged from one to 2-1/2 notes flat. A0 was actually a note sharp. This one set a new record for me for "Most Out-of-Tune Piano". Some of the unisons were in the neighborhood of a half-step off from one another. 1-1/2 pitch raise passes to A440 and then a tuning pass. It didn't sound great when I was done, but it did sound a whole lot better.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Piannaman@aol.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 11:08 PM
Subject: An interesting spinet


> List, 
> 
> I know that subject line seems like a bit of an oxymoron, but it's true.  I 
> worked on a spinet the other day that was at least an attempt to make a good 
> piano.  
> 
> It was a 1947 George Steck.  The first interesting thing I noticed when I 
> took off the music desk was that the lifter wires did not slide into slots on 
> the ends of the keys.  Instead, there were holes drilled through the key-ends 
> that the wires poked through.  Lost motion regulation was accomplished by 
> turning a round wood nut that was held in place by a cork nut like you find 
> on many player parts.  My first thought was "how do you get these out of here 
> without a major hassle and crumbling pieces??"  
> 
> I opened the bottom to adjust the pedal mechanism, and I found my answer:  
> there is a rail with flanges screwed to it iunder the keybed that has lifters 
> to which the lifter wires are attached.  The whippens rest on a felt platform 
> at the opposite end of each lifter.  So one has to detach nothing to get the 
> action out, except the four bracket bolts.  
> 
> Definitely a better mousetrap, but I'm sure in the end it proved far too 
> costly to fabricate.  Anybody else ever seen one of these?  I was also 
> surpised by the lack of false beats in the high treble(though, as usual, the 
> bass was torture).
> 
> Dave Stahl
> 
> 
>