The only thing that came to mind was that he broke parts on two pianos trying to scavenge from them to fix the third...? > Hello list, > > Earlier this week I tuned 3 pianos for a school music festival, two > Hamiltons and one Kimball. All were at least 25 years old, and in > addition > to the typical abuse that school pianos take, each showed signs of > previous > incompetent repair work, which I was later told was done by a former music > teacher who attempted to do the repairs himself. To undo all his mistakes > would have taken hours -- but that's another story. I was being paid only > to get them tuned and ready for the next day's festival. > > The first Hamilton was missing two hammers -- not just the hammers, but > the > butts and everything. They had obviously been removed by the previous > "technician" for some reason (broken shanks, maybe) and never replaced. > They were for B6 and C7. Since the piano was going to be used the next > day, > my temporary solution was to replace them with the parts from B7 and C8, > since I figured the former notes would be required more often than the > latter. If anybody has an old junk Hamilton action with parts they'd be > willing to sell, please let me know (naturally I checked inside the bottom > of the cabinet for the missing parts -- no luck -- this was easy to do, > since the bottom panel was missing!). > > Now, to the second Hamilton. Action was OK, but one treble string was > missing. By a strange coincidence, it was the B6/C7 string -- same place > as > on the first piano. I chose not to replace it; I figured it would have > been > badly out of tune by the next day, so it would be better to replace it > next > time I came out. > > Now for the third piano, the Kimball (which did not have a Schwander > action, > btw). A quick look at the action revealed mismatched, obviously older, > hammers on two notes. You guessed it: B6 and C7. My first impulse was > that > the other "technician" had taken parts from the first Hamilton and put > them > in this Kimball, but the butts were original, only the shanks and hammers > had been replaced (crookedly, but they worked), so these couldn't have > been > from the first piano. > > Now for the mystery: can anybody offer a theory as to why all three pianos > suffered damage to the same two exact notes? > > --Paul Mulik > >
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