Hi List - Upon approaching a first-time customer's Ellington upright on Friday, I stood and stared in disbelief at the keys in the bass. Over the phone she had said that her daughter was complaining about sticky keys. What I saw was 10-12 keys, not consecutive, but all in the bass, that were going 'every which way' but straight. They were not a little crooked, some were not even able to ride on their own front pin and were pushing so hard on their neighbors that even keys a couple notes down were affected... kind of like a 10-car pile-up. When I opened up the case to gain access to the keys I could see that some unexplainable event had taken place. The only scenario I can conjure up is that at some time in the past a technician removed the keys for some reason and a pack of rhinoceros' just happened to stampede thru the room at that moment. They were mangled beyond description, and the oddest efforts had been made by some cowboy to cut large triangular notches and glue hunks of wood into the sides of the keys to "re-route" them into place - quite unsuccesfully, to be sure. My question is this.... does anyone know of a service that would remanufacture app. 12 keys? The rest of the keys are fine, but these 12 are WAY beyond fixing. Has anyone run into anything similar and found a successful remedy? I have replaced the stray key here and there over the years, but with this many I thought it may be more feasible to farm it out to an operation that specializes in this kind of work. Any leads would be greatly appreciated.. Mark Potter bases-loaded@juno.com
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