There is no way that a the simple compression ridge / separation pictured is due to moving. In the course of my 'removal / disposal' work, I have personally destroyed several grands, uprights, squares grands, etc, with sledge hammers and a sawzall. I have also pushed hundreds of such pianos off the back of my van into the dumpster for disposal. Unless you take a swing directly at a soundboard with a big hammer, you aren't going to cause this type of crack. To get that result from typical 'moving' techniques, you would have to drop the piano from about 10 feet in the air. ( just guessing, probably it would take a higher drop than that ) onto hard concrete......in any case the drop required would destroy the rim or crack the plate or both before it would do that to the soundboard. The pictures should look far more violent and you would be looking at pieces of a piano, not a piano with a little soundboard crack. Heavens....I'll bet there is dust on those damper heads, too.......those bastard movers again probably! If you can produce pictures of whatever 'damage' was done to the case, it will prove itself by this simple logic. Also, there are many reasons why you would hear a 'crack' sound as a piano is moved. The legs can shift when tilted and set......the casters can reseat themsleves creating a sound. ....an old mouse turd inside could rattle just once to sound like a click......not to mention whatever other foreign objects are in there. Once the dampers are free from the strings as the grand piano is vertical....any click or sound becomes magnified by the soundboard. Probably the customer heard a floor board settle as the weight of the piano made its way across the room. IMHO.....They are trying to get something for nothing by defrauding an insurance company. PS I had a similar situation years ago, where I was called in to a furniture guy to condemn a piano that had been dropped by a local "moover". There was some case damage, which everyone including the moovers, agreed upon. In the course of examining the piano I noted the condition of all the various systems. There was a terrible restringing job with poorly coiled wires, amongst other evidence of quick / shoddy work in a past rebuild. The customer insisted that this also happened by the movers. While I agreed that the work was crap, I had to defend the fact that the "moover" didn't cause the poor stringing technique. After that....the piano owner, in addition to hating on the mover and the furniture guy.... also hated me too. No, apparently we can NOT all just get along. : -) -- Best Regards, Brad Smith, RPT www.SmithPiano.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090623/c05a2fbf/attachment.htm>
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