Jasper American Piano

[Kevin E. Ramsey RPT]

Having a "tune-off" is one thing,,,,,Trying to kill two of our best people
is another...(just joking)
----- Original Message -----
From: "J Patrick Draine" <draine@mediaone.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 4:55 AM
Subject: Re: Jasper American Piano


> >In a message dated 11/21/00 10:38:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> >mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes:
> >
> >>Anyone ever hear of a Jasper American Piano? I tuned a 42" console today
> >>that was reported to be about 5 years old. It had the name of a local
small
> >>time piano dealer bolted/nailed/screwed/glued to the plate and to the
> >>fallboard.
> >
> >The Parent corporation of Kimball is Jasper American Inc. This name was
used
> >to provide "exclusive" dealerships to more than one dealer in a given
area.
> >
> >Its a Kimball.
> >
>
> In other words, Jaspers were the extraordinarily low ball "loss
> leader" units that dealers could have their own name plates on -- and
> of course these units invariably had "zero prep" (at least in my
> slight experience with them).
> Instead of the high flight tune-offs between Coleman & Smith, the
> ultimate PTG challenge might have been having a couple of our
> superstars each uncrate one of those puppies, and after a frenzy of
> string seating and hammer needling, see what they could turn them
> into. With a new set of bass strings ( I don't know whether a
> rescaling would improve the situation, but the quality of the sets
> were often very poor) -- perhaps replace the "fake buckskin" with
> real buckskin, etc. one might have a spinet or console you wouldn't
> mind retuning annually (well, *maybe*).
> Just a thought,
> Patrick
>