Jack Greenfield's "A History of Midwestern Piano Manufacturing" has a couple of pages on the Chickering Brothers piano company, and while not effusive in their praises, has some positive words about them. I did have a customer a number of years ago who was quite enthusiastic about their reputation (perhaps that "Acoustigrande" on the fallboard made it seem tres exclusive), but the specimen I was requested to appraise was in dismal condition. And after 80 or 100 years of New England cycles of humidity extremes, many Chickering & Sons pianos are in similar shape.<div> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Patrick Draine<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 2, 2008 7:22 PM, <<a href="mailto:paulrevenkojones@aol.com">paulrevenkojones@aol.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Below, and attached, is a picture of a whippen from a Chickering Bros (ugh) grand. </font></blockquote></div></div>