In telling all of these stories, we shouldn't be too hard on the poor=20 fools. But we should tell these stories so that we know that those poor=20 fools are out there. I once breezed through an antique store to look at an early 18th=20 Broadwood square. Unfortunately the guy did know the value of it. But he=20 also told me of a Spanish barrel organ which he'd had for awhile. There=20 being no keyboard, the only way for a tuner to activate the strings was=20 by plucking them. The tuner called made it through the temperament and=20 bass half of the compass without mishap, but somewhere plucking his=20 octaves up into the treble, his hand widened a tad. He wasn't the sort to= =20 play his work before packing up and so it was left to the antique dealer=20 to discover that the pitch of most of the treble was 100c down from the=20 rest of the piano. Bet you never heard "Santa Lucia" played like that! I also came in on a Steinway AIII with a respectable rebuilding maybe 25=20 years old. The owner, whose daughter was a piano major in college,=20 relayed the complaint that the UC pedal was a little stiff. Sure enough,=20 there were strips of 50-grit sandpaper glued grit up to the keybed at=20 four points under the front rail (and in between these points, a gap=20 between the rail and bed equal to the thickness of said sandpaper). These= =20 had been installed to quiet the knocking between the rail and bed caused=20 by a frightful downturning of the glides. All for the purpose of a 7/16"= =20 dip.=20 It gets wild and wolly out here!=20 Bill Ballard RPT NH Chapter "I gotta go ta woik...." Ian Shoales, Duck=D5s Breath M. Theater
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