Today I was called out to a local state hospital to "tune a piano." Seems all the pianos there were purchased at the time of the hospital complex's construction: 1855! This one is an 8' 9" Chickering concert grand. Some time ago (I'm guessing 30 or more years ago) the hammers were replaced. Several missing bass strings, and several very poorly installed "universal" bass strings. Aside from the missing & poorly matched bass strings, the main headache is the damper flanges: glued in, not screwed in. A half dozen manage to function anyway, but a couple are completely dead. Others wiggle a bit -- just waiting to fall apart later. While I left an estimate for replacing the missing & bad bass strings, and reglueing 6-8 damper flanges, now that I'm home, back in a comparatively "rational" environment I'm coming back to my senses -- the best thing to do is give them a price for a (subcontracted) complete remanufacturing. That will never happen, but they need to know (yeah I *told* my contact person but I need to document it). Or perhaps just do a complete overhaul on the damper system -- anybody out there retrofit one of those Renner back actions in one of these?? When I inquired about expected usage one of replies was "One of the patients performed at Carnegie Hall!" Perhaps, but it has since occurred to me that another patient may be "Napoleon" and yet another considers himself to be God. PS Have any of y'all done a complete remanufacture on one of these in recent years? While I don't doubt the results could be impressive the resale value to remanufacturing cost ratio must be a hard sale. Rambling again, Patrick
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