donated piano

[Ron Nossaman]

Tuning at one of my colleges yesterday, I met one of the "new"
donated pianos. Turned out to be a 46" Steinway vertical,
circa '65, with accelerated action, diaphragmatic soundboard,
and really big pressure bars in the top two sections. It tuned
much better than I was anticipating, and I was beginning to
relax and go with it when I got up to the top end. When I
stuck the mute in C-8, I thought "Man, that looks long!", so I
measured it. It's 60mm, almost exactly, which puts it at 89%
of breaking tension in my spreadsheet. Actually, it'll be a
tad lower than that, since it's 12 gage wire, and the smaller
gages tend to have a bit higher proportional tensile strength.
Still, I can't help but wonder who's brother in law came up
with this and why. As long as nothing breaks
(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA), it's not as bad a "donation" as I
anticipated.

I may be meeting the other donation Friday. Oh, and I noticed
yesterday that the Wurlitzer one of the prof's dumped on it's
back and I bolted back together last year now has the
soundboard coming loose at the top. It'll be an interesting
day. Imagine my excitement.

Ron N