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[Delwin D Fandrich]

pianoman wrote:

> Happy Thanksgiving All.
> Tuesday I retuned my one church Horugel owner.  I have tuned it for about 2
> years now.  I guess this question may be better answered by the "over the
> pond guys".  The way the Samick Horugel is built, using every string is a
> tied string approach, were the Horugels from Samick copies of the original
> Horugel who left the scene in 1952?
> Or was the first Samick Horugel just their first piano with the Horugel
> name on it?
> Those of you who have seen and serviced the original Horugels, how good  a
> piano were they?
> James Grebe
> R.P.T. from St. Louis
> pianoman@inlink.com
> "Only my best is good enough"

James,

A dealer I used to work for ordered one of the early container loads of Horugels (rhymes with "horrible," doesn't it?). One
of my customers bought one against my advice. But she was a recently divorced teacher on a very limited budget and really
wanted a grand.

One night shortly thereafter she heard a loud, rather strange sounding noise that awoke her. Thinking someone had broken in
to her house she called the police. Much commotion and confusion, but no burglars. The next day with her first student she
discovered that her piano had no bass. I mean the hammers would hit the strings, but there was virtually no sound. It seems
that the up bearing on the bass bridge (yes, the "up" bearing) had pulled the bass bridge off of the soundboard, taking a
substantial amount of the soundboard with it. When I got there, the bridge was kind of floating in the air about 10 mm above
the soundboard surface. I have no idea what fluke of manufacturing set up this particular failure, but you can probably guess
what the suggested repair was. Give up? OK. I was supposed to install longer screws through the soundboard and simply pull it
back down after shoving as much glue as possible under the separated soundboard layers. In the end she got her Bush & Lane
upright back. An infinitely better piano.

I once saw the touch-up man who worked for the same dealer walk in with a large grand lid shaped piece of thick, ugly
polyester. The "finish" had come off of the lid of one piano.

Well, enough of that. This list doesn't like horror stories. But you did ask...

It was always my impression that this was part of a plan to vault Samick into the mass-production "piano" manufacturing
business. They used the name Horugal until no one would buy any more of them. They then switched to Stegler. When they had
exhausted that market, and as they learned the bottom line of what people would accept in a piano, they finally switched to
the, as yet unsullied, Samick name.

They were very frustrating pianos to work on. Spend as much time as you like on regulation; six months later they would be
way out of whack. Spend as much time as you like on tuning and/or voicing. It wouldn't last. The only people of the time that
were happy with them were those who used them for picture holders and never played them.

I quite doing that type of work in the early '80's. Did they improve after that? I don't know. You'll have to ask others.

Regards, and a happy and thankful Thanksgiving Day to you all!

-- ddf