weird piano

[Mitch Kiel]

	Today I saw a very weird piano.

	It's kinda looks like a small square grand because it's rectangular and
the back corners are rounded. The lid is hinged at the back. But in reality it's
not a square grand at all. It's much weirder than a square.
	First weird clue:
	The soundboard is upside down. The ribs are on top, and the bridge and
strings are under the board. Yes, it's true -- when you stand at the keys and
lift the lid, you see ribs, the board, and the naked tops of tuning pins. To
tune it you obviously put your tuning hammer on the top of the pins but the
strings are attached to the protruding pin bottoms. The strings are overstrung
as per normal and go from tuning pin diagonally towards the tail area.
	Second weird clue:
	The action is (more or less) an upright action on its back -- the hammers
and dampers point up at the strings. The action probably comes out by removing
the action nuts from two vertical action bolts and unscrewing a few hanger
screws, but I wasn't brave enough to attempt it today.

	A now cascade of weird clues:
	Each cheekblock is attached to the rim by a woodscrew accessed by
removing an octave's worth of keys. The keyframe looks like a normal vertical
piano's and is screwed to the keybed at several points along each rail.
	The piano is ebony and measures 57" across and 45" from keyslip to tail
(if it had a real tail). Each of the three legs is about the size of a 2x12.
There are 85 keys and the keytops are plastic. On key #1 it says "Iovette,
Shenstone British Manufacture."
	There is no name I could see on the piano, but I did find a serial number
(??) inked onto the board of 126725. On the bottom of the rim at the treble end
is stamped "K&C 4182" and on a paper tag on the keyframe to the left of Key #1
it says "order # 46089, 11/6/37, Cramer, size 16 x 9 1/8 DB." That same number
(46089) is also stamped onto keys 1 and 2. I strongly suspect it's a British
piano because one of the paper shims under the keyframe is from a Liverpool
magazine. (Another shim is a cut up worker's time card, showing 9 1/2 hour
workdays!!)

	Does anyone have any idea what the *heck* kind of piano this is and what
it might be worth? The tone is OK, somewhat like a small console, and the touch
is fairly firm because it has back-weighted keys.
	Of course it's wildly out of tune. Some tuner scratched his name on the
board but it's illegible; his scratching indicates he tuned the piano twice
yearly for about twenty years and that A=435. The finish is pretty good and the
keybed felts and bridle tapes (!!) look new. The present owner tells me his
daughter bought it ten years ago at a sale at a mansion in Seattle where she was
told it came across on a boat.

	Mondo bizarro, eh what?

	Mitch Kiel