At 06:19 PM 3/13/97 -0900, you wrote: >I agree with Les Smith's assessment of the Pearl River Pianos. They are no >fun to work on. > >I did work on a bunch of Hastings pianos which I believe were Pearl River >pianos assembled in Macau, a Portuguese colony near Hong Kong. The Parts >came from Pearl River (mainland China) I was told. We ran into a few of those here. "Interesting" pianos. Other than extremely sloppy construction the two biggest problems I saw with them were capstans that had been either hammered down or pried up during adjustment rather than being turned, and my particular favourite (NOT!) tuning pins that had NO THREADS. As for specs, if you can make them play at ALL you'll be lucky. They are the "bottom of the barrel" IMO, and dealers who sell them without making that VERY clear to a customer are doing them a disservice. If I recall, Yat Lam Hong wrote an excellent article in the Journal many years ago about visiting the Chinese and Macau piano factories. It's worth reading if you're going to attack these things en masse. John Musselwhite, RPT Calgary, Alberta Canada musselj@cadvision.com
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