Pathetic Monster Piano

[Kevin E. Ramsey]

    Terry,
    Before you try to sell them a Stanwood redesign, isn't there really a
whole lot that you could do to improve the piano just the way it is?  Do
some regulation and find out what is causing the high downweight for
instance. Go after the false beats and see if they could be improved. Do
some hammer shaping and voicing. Check centerpin tightness etc.
    I'd be willing that you can get it back to an acceptable level of tone
and touch without having to do any action geometry work, and you could
probably do it for a price that they won't baulk at. You just need to get
permission to spend some time on it.
    Just my 2 cents.



Kevin E. Ramsey
ramsey@extremezone.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 8:52 PM
Subject: Pathetic Monster Piano


> I tuned a Kawai GS-100 today. It is a 9 ft. grand made in 1989. It is at a
> University. It is beat. Key downweight in the 60 to 75 gram range, false
> beats abounding throughout tenor and up, bass sounds like, like, something
> I've never heard before - totally metallic. It was real hard to tune for
the
> false beats. The guy who watches over it told me he wanted it tuned
because
> several professors from the music department were going to play on it and
> last week they said it could use some tuning.
>
> If music professors are playing this piano, I would imagine there would be
> some interest in having the piano work and sound good. How do you go about
> educating the piano dude to let him know that his piano is operating at
> about 25% and that he could do a Stanwood action job, fix the loose bridge
> pins, restring the piano for perhaps $6000 and likely have a very nice
> piano? This would be reletively easy for me if the piano were 80 years
old.
> But on an 11 year old piano? But there it is, in all its sub-mediocrity.
>
> I hate the idea of one of these professors even knowing that I touched the
> piano because anyone that knows what a nice piano is like would be
horrified
> by this thing (IMHO). What on earth happens to these pianos in just 11
> years. Before I looked up the age, I guess the piano was about 25 years
old.
>
> Terry Farrell
> Piano Tuning & Service
> Tampa, Florida
> mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
>