pretty big job on customer's 1925 Gulbranson upright; player unit removed waaay back when. (Thank God..or whoever) Besides the action overhaul that i would end up doing, the keypins and tuning pin coils were quite rusty, so not having the Travis Tuning Pin & Coil Cleaner, I had to improvise. I used a yellow highlighter, which i cut in half, to use as the cylinder which was to hold about 1" length of fuel line hose purchased at the local auto parts store. I then found that a standard hammer shank fit perfectly into the front of the highlighter where the tip had been. once glued inplace, it was chucked into my drill and viola! Coil rust remover. I did go through about 10 pieces of hose, but in no time flat ALL the coils were sparkling and rust free! Then, I cleaned the key pins in the same fashion, but this time I used a piece of dense felt, cut to the length of a keypin and about 1/2" square, and the drilled a very small hole straight down the middle that would fit snuggly over each key pin. The other end was drilled larger to accept a large dowel that would be glued and chucked in the drill. worked great! Then I drizzeld McLube on all the key pins and they were now smooth as glass! I also sprayed the bridges very generously and then used Protek CLP on the the rest of the term. points. Now, I forgot to mention...this piano was between 117-235 cents F L A T !!!!!! It hadn't been touched, let alone tuned in maybe 50 years! I told the customer it would probably be best to NOT bring the pitch all the way to A440, and I suggested A 435. I told him if all goes well, we could try for A440 at a future date. I explained the very real possibility of some, or many broken strings, even if i only bring it to A 435. But something told me that because of all the attention to preparation, especially the cleaning of the coils and lubing, the old player could take it. Well, as i began the initial pitch raise, i noticed the strings were rendering quickly and not getting held up at all. I was quite surprised at just how well this piano from the days of silent films was responding! The pitch raise went off without a hitch...no pun intened, and the tuining followed in quick succession; All without a SINGLE broken string! Actually, I felt it could have probab taken the additional raising to A 440, but I didn't want to press my luck. The really cool thing, is that the original call for this job, which by the way, the customer thought all it needed was a "regular tuning", came from my short-lived Penny-Saver ad! It turned out that this one job alone payed for the ad more than 15 times over! Gotta love it! Terry Peterson _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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