A B Chase Upright

[tune4u@earthlink.net]

You might give Ken Caulkins at Ragtime West a call. He does beautiful things
with high-quality old uprights so I assume he buys them OR he will sell you
kits to convert it to a gorgeous player or an orchestrion. Check it out at
www.ragtimewest.com

I had a 1904 Crown that was like that (when Geo. P. Bent was making them,
NOT the later Winter Co. Crowns). Incredible quality and attention to
detail. The maker had even beautify carved their name on the top frame on
the back of the piano in letters about 3 1/2" tall with a carved (routed)
border. They used a lathe to cut very handsome handles. And but a beautiful
natural finish on all the wood. Heck, the back of that piano looked better
then the front of most pianos! Those were the 4-pedal pianos, #4 was for
hammer-blocking practice mechanism. And that thing had the biggest, heaviest
harp I've seen--and timber framing to match. It almost fell on me when I was
taking it off the truck: I'd a been a goner, for sure! Anyway, it was a
beauty.

Unfortunately, it had lived in a garage for a couple of decades and the
soundboard was really cracked up and the pin block was shot and the action
parts were brittle and some of the carved wooden moldings were missing
chunks and I was lazy and it was taking up a lot of room so I burned it. It
made a glorious bonfire and the scouts enjoyed it, but I now wish I hadn't.
I almost feel guilt.

Alan R. Barnard
Salem, MO

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org]On
Behalf Of kennys@kennyguitars.com
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 7:54 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: Re: A B Chase Upright


I have an A. B. Chase upright in my shop right now.  I think it's the most
remarkable old upright I've ever worked on.  Excellently built and in very
good shape for a piano of its age.  I didn't really want an old upright in
my shop at the time, but this fellow calls up asking who would haul a piano
to the dump.  I just didn't have the heart to let that happen.
Unfortunately, the hack had already cut off many of the treble strings.  I'd
like to rebuild this piano, but I'm left wondering how a technician can
market an old upright that doesn't have "Steinway" on the fallboard.

Colin Kenny

----- Original Message -----
From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 9:19 PM
Subject: A B Chase Upright


> In the spirit of David Love's post on a nice-sounding piano, here is
another. I inspected a 1912 A. B. Chase upright today ("is this piano worth
tuning?"). It's overall condition for this old a pianos was about 96
percentile (obviously not saying a whole lot). It appeared to be quite the
piano. It had an open pinblock with wooden top-bass string termination. It
had four string sections. It did not have a tenor bridge, but the long
bridge had absolutley NO hockey stick end. It had a vertically laminated
long bridge. Amazingly, it was in relatively good shape - all keys straight
as an arrow, clean action, robust-sounding bass - pretty amazing for a 91
year old gal. If I were looking for an upright to remanufacture, I would
snap this one up real quick.
>
> Terry Farrell
>
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