Coin of the Realm

[Ron Nossaman]

Wow, I posted the question about Terry's bridge photos 9 1/2 hours ago, and
it just now showed up. Ain't technology grand? Seems my local e-mail server
has either come down with an attack of boojums, or turned into a two bit
system. It'll probably be next month when you see this, but what the heck
(or even two).

Tuning a Wurlitzer console first thing this morning, I came across the
click in the low treble. Switching from tuning mode to troubleshooting
mode, I shifted gears, kicked in another brain cell (two should be enough
for a measly little click), and gave chase. 

The click happened on release, as the key came back up to level - ok, to
nominally "level". Don't be so picky. Since it cleverly didn't occur to me
to remove my ear plugs (two brain cells otherwise occupied), I couldn't
immediately tell where the click was coming from. I tried bouncing the
hammer, wippen, and key independently and decided it was the key. I stood
up and looked over the upstop rail to see if anything was underneath it and
sitting in top of the key button. No luck. Lifting the wippen and rocking
the key up and down produced clicks some of the time, but not always.
Curious. Why not always? This calls for drastic measures and all the
diagnostic powers at my command. I pulled out the remaining stops and
kicked in the third brain cell. Playing the key normally (Hush, I said not
to be so picky), I discovered that if I pushed it down to the right and
released, it clicked. To the left and release, it didn't. Aha! This means
something, and I'd already noted that the tails of the keys weren't rubbing
together in the first round. Fishing between keys with my mute handle, I
came up with a gold colored token a little bigger than a quarter, from a
local restaurant. It was not quite thick enough to jam between the keys and
make one stay down, or even drag noticeably, but just thick enough that the
wippen weight on the dog-legged key levered the key over far enough to grip
the token between the depressed key and it's neighbor and slightly lift it
off the front rail on the upstroke, then dropping it to produce the click.
Deeply weird. I gave it to the old man who decided it would be entertaining
to try to trade it for food the next time they went. I'm not sure, but I
think I'm beginning to have a detrimental effect on my customers.

My 1:00 pm stop today was at a music teacher's home. She had three pianos
to tune - a new Boston, a nowhere nearly new Story & Clark, and a Hamilton
studio somewhere in between, but in the basement. I pitch raised and tuned
the Boston, lubricated the pedal squeaks, pulled the action and brushed the
hammers (per request), and moved to the S&C. It had apparently not been
tuned yet... ever, so I got to do a really big pitch raise on it. As I was
stripping up to tune it, Grandma wheeled past asking if I would still be
here at 3:30. Since it was about 2:45 by then and I still had at least two
tunings to do, I told here the prospects were pretty good that I would.
That was just fine with her because I could answer the door at 3:30 when
the Hawks guy came to poison the house, and send him on back to where she
was headed. I told her that as he was arriving, I would be leaving.
Whatever the stuff is that they spray is not well received by my sinuses
and respiratory system and I didn't care to suffer the consequences. "Oh,
he just sprays for a short while", she said. Biting every lip I own, I
figured I'd better finish this tuning and be packed up when he got there.
He was about five minutes late, and I had just slid the lid on and closed
my case when he arrived. I stopped off downstairs to inform my customer of
what was going on, and that I'd be back in a few days after those sweet
little piano students had absorbed all the lingering toxic vapors. Ok, I
didn't really say that, but I wanted to. Turns out she had asked hubby not
to schedule the bugicide on the day she had scheduled the tunings, but he
had done it anyway - and gone off to work until the vapors settled. I have
never understood where people get the notion that they have the right to
poison us lesser life forms, at least the ones that meet the height
requirement for the ride.

Just another day in a baggy old Wookie suit.

Ron N