Kranich and Bach Bashers Beware!

[Michael Jorgensen]

To Les and the rest,
       I enjoyed all or your hilarious posts concerning the old K&Bs,
and especially laughed about the turkey decal.  I know the suffering,
anguish, and frustrations of techs who've worked on them.  At first
glance this piano appears to be a PSO with its' thin case, no duplex
scale, and lack of agraffs.  However, under it one finds massive
structure equal to the best pianos.  Damping has not been a problem with
mine, perhaps because the strings stay put due to unusually sharp angles
and short string segments between the tuning pins and pressure bars.
There are no string buzzes and it is remarkably free of false beats, has
good sustain, clarity, and aftersound.  Amazingly it tunes easily and
holds well except for individual tuning pin failure.  So what's wrong
with pressure bars if they're done right?    The real difference though
is when you play it-- Really!!,  This K&B compares very favorably
against Dads' steinways.  Ralph Votapek, the first Van Cliburn winner,
has played dozens practice recitals on it and it isn't all that bad.  I
also own an old Baldwin L in nice condition which is the one I would
sell since the K&B is technically not worth much but sounds about as
good. 
     The old K&Bs were creative pianos full of radical ideas, which
weren't all good.  Most are messes which don't work very well, if at
all, giving a very negative impression.  K&B won style awards for thier
sleek pianos  The narrow small action cavity necessitated a highly
compressed unique action which had problems.  If this piano sounded like
a PSO, I would have dragged it to the firepit long ago, but I just can't
do that!  The ruling grade in piano tone building is the
case/rim/plate/soundboard structure, so even Del couldn't do much with a
Brambach. If he'd had a K&B it would have turned out much different.  

-Mike Jorgensen RPT