[pianotech] Lester Console, was Lester Spinet

[Rob McCall]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message. The insight I've gleaned from this conversation will come in handy someday.  Unfortunately, it wasn't today!  :-)

I arrived at the appointment and was led to a Lester piano.  But it was taller...  Turned out to be a console from 1946.  Had the cutout ends off the back of the keys and a very compact action.  It did have some plastic parts in an unbroken state, including the backchecks and the back end of the wippen, which had a capstan screw drilled through and inserted through the plastic and facing downward on to the back end of the key.

The problems were many, including: several loose hammer flanges, bass dampers that wouldn't dampen and would only raise with the key but not with the pedal (above the break was fine), numerous sticking keys, broken keytops, one broken key (E5, at the balance rail pin), etc.

When they bought the piano, they thought it was 15 years old.  They only missed by 49 years!

Anyway, I was going over the items with the wife and she seemed agreeable, but wanted to spread out the repairs for her budget. I was telling her the most important things that needed to be fixed, when Sergeant Husband walked in, overhearing our conversation, and very loudly stated, "We are NOT spending anymore money on this piano, I already spent $125 buying it!  It just needs to be tuned and that'll be good enough for the kids!"

So, it got a 60-100 cent pitch raise and a tuning...  and a shy smile from the wife who told me to email her the list of needed repairs...  :-)

So we'll see how this goes!

Regards,

Rob McCall

McCall Piano Service, LLC
www.mccallpiano.com
Murrieta, CA
951-698-1875



On Jul 14, 2010, at 04:43 , Gerald Groot wrote:

> If you're lucky, the previous tuner replaced them with wooden elbow's.  I
> remember about 30 years ago, Yat Lam Hong asking me what I used to replace
> elbow's.  My answer?  Clip on plastic elbows.  I thought it was the norm.
> His response?  "Why you use plastic to replace plastic?  Why not use wood?
> Won't break."  Logical response.  Since then, that's what I've done. He's
> right.  Sometimes the clip ons break again, especially years later.  Wooden
> ones will not.  
> 
> Jer