Baldwin SD

[Avery]

List (& especially any of you major rebuilders out there),

Do any of you have any direct experience with an SD-6 #118127 (1952 I 
was told)? My atlas is
at the university.

Today, I went to look at one for sale at a store at a good price. For 
several years, we've been
needing one to put into our large orchestra/band rehearsal hall to 
avoid having to move one into
there from our major performance hall for rehearsals of big concertos.

It's been refinished and had new hammers (Renner Blues, I think) 
installed on the old shanks.
Graphited knuckles, etc. Anyway, I'm not worried about all that. 
That, I can handle.

My question is, there is a tone problem in the middle agraffe 
section. (It's so hard to describe
sounds in an e-mail.) The dealer kept saying he thought it was 
primarily a hammer fitting/string
leveling problem. Yes, there is some of that that needs to be done. 
But I believe it's a problem
in the agraffes themselves. This isn't a hammer fitting type of 
sound. It's a distorted/zinging
kind of sound. Like a termination problem or something not seated 
well. There are some agraffes
that are not parallel to the strings and I first thought that was the 
problem. But there are also
some with that same sound where the agraffes are lined up correctly. 
I'm assuming it probably came
that way from the factory. And it's only in that one section. I 
didn't have my tools with me because
I didn't expect anything like that to come up, so I couldn't even 
experiment a little. You don't
really notice it all that much when just normally playing it. Just 
when playing each note individually.
Especially with a little power.

The piano has never been restrung. Even still has the aluminum 
wrapped type upper bass strings. But
it sounds great. A BIG bass sound! Decent sustain. The only real 
problem is in that one area. Have any
of you run across this? Can the agraffes be straightened a little 
without removing the strings? My
semi-educated guess is that that section is going to have to be 
restrung with new agraffes. Or at least,
"redone" agraffes. They did buff the tops of them, though. :-)

This is pre-accujust hitch pins and from the first treble break down, 
has one single-tie string on
each unison. The tech at the store said they could correct the 
problem, which I would prefer to have
done before we buy it but I was wondering if any of you had any 
ideas? The dealer said he'd pay me
to do the regulation & voicing. Which it needs.

Am I on the right track about the agraffes? Thanks.

Avery Todd
University of Houston