> The piano is a 1916 Lyon & Healy Player Upright. The history she gave > me was that she bought for about $4,000 from a private owner who had > supposedly restored it in 2001. When she said it was restored I was NOT > expecting what I discovered. What you describe is exactly what I've discovered and come to expect for the last 30+ years. "Player people" generally know and care absolutely nothing about pianos. The mouse detritus may or may not even have been shoveled out, but the piano is almost always in it's original condition of advanced decomposition, and is typically nearly unplayable by any reasonable standard. The case is nearly always refinished, sometimes nicely, and new keytops have been installed, badly, and not trimmed to fit the key. With the original key bushings still in, this makes for an exceptionally professional result. The hammers are shaped with what seems to have been a chainsaw, with the moldings hitting the strings in the top octave, and the action is so worn out it can't possibly be regulated. The player is typically poorly and incompletely done as well. The valves are original, replaced with something that has no hope of working, like heavy steel washers surfaced with Neoprene, or incompetently reworked, with no apparent understanding of gapping or seating requirements. Pouches could be made of anything at all, and dished randomly, again, with no apparent understanding of what they should do. Pneumatics likely haven't been re-hinged, and the hinges are probably so full of PPCo's plastic glue (PVC-E, for "flexibility") that they won't collapse under vacuum. Gaskets original (possibly greased), and pumpers covered with water base contact cement with scrap leather gussets (sheepskin, left over from their pump organ work) at the cracked corners so they don't even have to re-cover the things. They amazingly work, sometimes - sort of. This is exactly the kind of ignorant hack junk work attitude that needs to die from the planet. There's no reason these people can't attempt to learn something about what they do to make money, except that they won't. So far, the almost universal whine has been that they can't take the time to do anything right (they know how, of course, but just can't), because nobody will pay what it takes to do it right. That's true. Very few will. That's because there are still plenty of cheap hacks quite willing to take the job for 10% of what it would take to do it well, and rip them off. "I make good money working on this junk", they brag. But questioning them on what it takes to do any of it right indicates that they think they know only what they think they need to know to do what they're minimally doing, and aren't interested in knowing or doing ANYTHING more, even at risk of increasing their income and improving their reputation. They'll defend their ignorance to the bloody death, and probably call you an elitist snob for suggesting anything else. So I'll still service the players I've rebuilt through the years. but I'm not interested in dealing with and being responsible for anyone else's lousy player work any more unless they want it rebuilt - which it almost certainly needs. There have been very rare exceptions, but well over 90% of the player work I've seen from other people has been as I describe. Ron N
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