Question about Pierce Atlas (is there anything else?)

[Stephen Grattan]

Gordon,  

To add to the confusion on the Hudson piano, some pianos with the name Hudson were also sold by the J.L. Hudson company in Detroit and they were made by Everett!  There is plenty of confusion to go around.  In the case of an obscure company - I suggest to people that they hire a RPT to remove the action and keys on their pianos.  Quite often, a date will be written in pencil or rubberstamped on the back of the wippen rail, a key, the keybed or on a hammer or two.  I have also found full spec sheets on 3X5 forms under the keys (an 1893 Ivers & Pond upright).  Other than that, I know of no way to determine the age of some of these pianos.
 
Steve Grattan
Lost Chord Clinic



----- Original Message ----
From: "pnotnr at aol.com" <pnotnr at aol.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 9:04:37 PM
Subject: Question about Pierce Atlas (is there anything else?)

99% of the time it seems that I can find the year of manufacture for a piano in the Pierce Atlas, but every so often I hit a dead end.  For example, I just saw a Hudson Console piano with a serial number 285578.  I looked up Hudson and no #'s are given, but it says that Hudson was made by Wellsmore and Jacob Doll.

Looking up Jacob Doll I find that the 1931 serial # was 181,000 and that after 1931, the company went into "receivers hands"  And looking at the previous years numbers, it is clear that they didn't  produce 104,000 pianos that year!  (the same dead end is reached with Wellsmore)

Anyway, I'm not particularly concerned that I cannot find out when THIS piano was built, but once in a while I have a customer with an obscure piano who really would like to know how old their piano is. I've seen enough pianos that I can usually give a guess, but I usually put it in a 10 to 15 year ballpark figure.   If I can't find it in Pierce, I can't pin it down any closer then that.  So my question is whether there are any other sources out there with information that one cannot find in Pierce?  (How did he do it?)

Gordon Large, RPT
Hallowell, Maine


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