On Sun, 5 Nov 1995 AKarab@aol.com wrote: > John, by coincidence I recently saw a very similar instrument at a local > dealer that was > being resurrected. Unfortunately, the tuning pins were extremely loose and > the person > working on the restoration was not sure how to proceed. These pins are almost always too loose, the only solution is to consolidate the wrestplank with epoxy or plug the holes and redrill. Remember since the pins are threaded thruogh the plate you must enlarge the plate hole as well. We have very good luck restringing these but I would recommend replacing bridge pins as well as the originals sometimes fail under new stress. My feeling, from Helmholtz, is that these instruments were tuned quite sharp of 440, and in fact at or below this pitch the treble string tension is low and has not much "sing". For what it's worth, we restring and sell a number of these a year at prices ranging from 6 to 9,000, depending on how much case and action work is needed as well as the overall appereance of the instrument. Of course we are in a very low cost area compared to the rest of the country, and people here are very tight when it comes to piano expenditures. I'd like to think they would be worth more in a more prosperous region, because they are really very lovely and carefully made (not well designed in modern terms) instruments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Doremus dbd01@www.gnofn.org New Orleans
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