not quite 'factory'?

[Delwin D Fandrich]

Guy, Karen, and Tor Nichols wrote:
> 
> Ted, Del, and all the others,
>   Thanks very much for the offer, our chapter has those issues. We also have
> some of the issues that Dean Howell left to the chapter, including stuff
> from pre-PTG. Cool stuff.
>   I'll be glad to see it (the kluge) in print, and I guess that will add
> some "legitimacy" to the repair.
>   To sort-of answer Del's post, no, I haven't tried to remove the thing,
> yet. There's not really any notable energy loss in that range of this unit,
> but...you know....it's kinda like "how do you know when anchovies have gone
> bad?"
>   The real issue here is if the owner has any cause for pestering the
> original dealer. The piano was purchased "new". Enough time has passed that
> the dealer can likely deny any knowledge of that kind of repair. I'm not
> the regular tech for this machine, and the fellow that has been tuning it
> has been doing just that....tuning. I used the old analogy on the owner
> about tuning being like putting gas in his car, and that it was time to
> change the oil and rotate the tires. He may follow my advice and ask his
> regular fellow about tone and touch regulating. If history repeats, the
> other fellow's response will be "doesn't need it". But since I showed the
> owner a couple of things, like unlevel-out-of-phase-squeaky-knocky-uneven
> notes that shouldn't even be on a country recording, maybe he'll call me
> back to make that $2000.00 improvement for only $500.00. Oh well...
>   Thanks again to all for the feedback on this doohickus, I'll let you know
> "how it comes out". ha-ha
> 
> Guy
> Guy Nichols, RPT
> nicho@lascruces.com
>   "Irreversibility is the mechanism that brings order from chaos"
>                                                 Prigogine

----------

Guy,

I not so sure it must come out to stay. Just curious to know if it is
doing any good. The way some of these things were installed it was
possible to loosen them up without fully removing them. Is that possible
in this case? If so, you could check the tone response each way.

This idea was intended to help pianos with weak soundboards. The
assumption was that since crown was gone there was quite a lot less
springiness in the board and this process could add some back. Some went
so far as to say it accomplished the same thing as crown and might be
preferable. It didn’t and wasn’t. But, I do think there is some validity
to the concept and have tried it out myself a couple of times with
varying degrees of success. The results have always been a far cry from
a new soundboard, but on occasion it did make the piano sound less bad.
Which is probably why it was done to more uprights than grands—in those
days the idea of the disposable grand hadn’t really taken hold yet,
Brambach’s notwithstanding. If the piano had any real monetary value, it
was worth a new soundboard, if not, use the springs.

—ddf