Strings and sealing wax, and other fancy stuph

[Ron Nossaman]

I lied about the sealing wax, I think.

It's a 6' 1" Hallett Davis, Chinese made, with an "Imperial 
German Scale", which I assume means Fenner. It had a decent 
sound, nice plate and soundboard finish, with fairly ratty 
bridge notching. Very tight Delignit block, with what are 
likely 2-1/2" pins, judging from how far they torqued before 
the bottom of the pin moved in the block. Overall bearing was 
pretty erratic but overall positive, heavy on the front, and 
negative on the rear. Measurable crown everywhere I could 
reach, which surprised me, and great big ribs with nearly 
straight taped feathering. Even had a nice big bass cutoff. 
String coils an extremely uniform 3-1/2 turns, and no tuned 
duplexes, with reasonable length and angle front duplex.

Now, the fun part.

This thing has by far the heaviest music desk I've ever seen. 
The sucker has to weigh at least 40lbs! It also has the 
poorest rendering strings I've ever seen in a new piano, 1098s 
included, but only the plain wires. The bass rendered fine. A 
miserable thing to tune, given the torquey pins and poor 
rendering. I also noticed something I thought was weirder than 
usual. The core wire color of the bass strings is standard 
looking bright music wire, but the plain wires have a distinct 
silver sheen to them. I saw no obvious mechanical reason for 
the poor rendering, and with the odd color makes me wonder 
what the heck they are made of.

Oh yea, and selling for $8,658, while it lasts.
Ron N