[pianotech] Interesting find

[Ken & Pat Gerler]

Ron,
An employee of this institution for 21 years is either purchasing or has 
been given this piano and will be moving the piano from there to his home. 
He wanted me to confirm that it was worth the effort of moving it to his 
home for his 5 year old daughter. It was quite dirty inside (on the 
soundboard) and something was spilled down the base side of the keyframe and 
glued the felt to the keyframe. I had to dig down with a screwdriver to free 
the keyframe from the piano to remove the assembly.  I had played chromatic 
scales up and down the keyboard several times and there were no buzzes and 
the piano was fairly well in tune with itself and the last noted tuning was 
1950.  The original Ivory keytops are still on the piano but a couple are 
missing, several broken in the middle and reglued; several chipped, so it is 
getting new keytops and that was the reason for removing the keyframe/action 
assembly. Once out there was very little dust or debris in the cavity.  I 
also noted the pedal lyre was just "a bit loose" and in crawling under the 
piano to remove it I noted the pedal springs between the ribs and the 
support braces of the piano and rim.  It did not look like there were any 
loose ribs and when playing the chromatic scales, other that harshness of 
hard hammers, the sound was "clear".

When I go back with the recovered keytops to finish the work on the piano, I 
will experiment with taking the springs out and playing the piano and report 
back the results.  That will be in about a month.

Ken Gerler

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Interesting find


>
> I find it both interesting and depressing to consider how far we might 
> have gotten by now if we didn't reset to zero and start all over again so 
> often.
>
> Here, we have professional piano technicians, every one of whom has at 
> least occasional access to an actual piano, speculating without evidence 
> on the imagined tonal result of wedging one rib up on a beam. Yet not one 
> has spent the ten minutes necessary to whack out a quick wedge and 
> actually try it, so they'll know from experience what they're talking 
> about. Isn't anyone curious enough to spend 35¢ and find out something 
> this simple for themselves?
>
> Ron N
> Maybe there's a phone app... "I-Guess".
>