I lied about the sealing wax, I think. It's a 6' 1" Hallett Davis, Chinese made, with an "Imperial German Scale", which I assume means Fenner. It had a decent sound, nice plate and soundboard finish, with fairly ratty bridge notching. Very tight Delignit block, with what are likely 2-1/2" pins, judging from how far they torqued before the bottom of the pin moved in the block. Overall bearing was pretty erratic but overall positive, heavy on the front, and negative on the rear. Measurable crown everywhere I could reach, which surprised me, and great big ribs with nearly straight taped feathering. Even had a nice big bass cutoff. String coils an extremely uniform 3-1/2 turns, and no tuned duplexes, with reasonable length and angle front duplex. Now, the fun part. This thing has by far the heaviest music desk I've ever seen. The sucker has to weigh at least 40lbs! It also has the poorest rendering strings I've ever seen in a new piano, 1098s included, but only the plain wires. The bass rendered fine. A miserable thing to tune, given the torquey pins and poor rendering. I also noticed something I thought was weirder than usual. The core wire color of the bass strings is standard looking bright music wire, but the plain wires have a distinct silver sheen to them. I saw no obvious mechanical reason for the poor rendering, and with the odd color makes me wonder what the heck they are made of. Oh yea, and selling for $8,658, while it lasts. Ron N
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC