Stephen Brady rote: <<"Do you have any WD-40 I could borrow?" I asked what for, and he said he wanted to spray it all over the action because it "makes them play great!" >> How's about A. Kuerti, bless his heart. I took care of him at the Marlboro Festival this summer, during which the Steinway grands were coming through with damper wires pressed hard to the side of the DGR holes. I did the simple damper wire tweak on the M in his cottage, right in front of him. He confided that he had sent his wife into town for some WD-40, but was glad that I had "eased the DGR" for him. Later on that summer he watched me checking open string work in for standard and una corda positions as I do. "I would never pull strings. In fact, I used to have a little sandpaper strip on a handle which could be passed down through the strings to file the crown to fit the strings." I asked, "But after you've seated the hammers like this in the standard position, don't you then have open strings in the U.C.?" "Oh," he answered "una cordas never sound good anyway!" All due respect to this pianist. He and I got along well this summer. But it was disconcerting to find that misinformation such as this was what lay behind the reputation of a pianist as one who "carried his own tuning and regulation tools with him". BeRich Thanks for the overnight air express on the drum of Insta-Tune, but next time don't reverse the freight charges . Bill Ballard RPT "May you work on interesting pianos." NH Chapter, PTG Ancient Chinese Proverb
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