Tuned an 1893 S&S A1 today for a new client (a church). Within an estimated 10 years the piano has gotten restrung, block, key bushings & tops, wips/hammers & shanks. What a disaster. Barely tunable, barely playable. Approximately half the tuning pins are leaning so far forward that you would think the string coils would pop right off the top of the pin. I could barely keep my tuning lever on them. A few of them were leaning forward and next to one that happened to be angled back - I almost needed a thin-walled tuning lever head to get it on - the pins were almost touching each other at the top (luckily one was pounded into the block farther than the other so I had a little clearance). Don't know that tuning mattered much anyway, there were so many false beats - even in the tenor section (mostly loose bridge pins). Now being that some pins were leaning back, and some were leaning forward, does this suggest that whoever drilled the block was drunk or was there maybe rotten areas in the wood? How in the world could the pins get so erratic? I'll be going there again in a week or two and will take a picture. New plastic keytops put on keys without planing down the keystick. Sharps had to be raised so high they were being pushed down by the fallboard when opened. Many sharps did not go through let-off. I could go on and on. I stop with just one last comment: what crap work. At PTG conferences I have seen a number of rebuilt pianos that clearly were examples of very fine workmanship. Out in the wild though over the few years I have been servicing pianos I have run across maybe a dozen or two grands or high-end uprights that have been restrung/action work/etc. I have yet to see one that I would describe as being "nice". A few might be reasonably classified as "marginally acceptable". But most have been poor or worse. What's the deal? I feel marginally better now. Thanks ;-) Terry Farrell
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