Una Corda Blues

Ron Nossaman RNossaman@cox.net
Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:29:32 -0600


>  This woman used the una corda so much that its use had caused the 
> hammers to become totally flat-to!
>pped!
>Terry Farrell

I had one of these last week in a professor's studio at a college. An old 
Baldwin L. When I asked if there any problems besides tuning, she said the 
una corda didn't work right.  The piano was too loud, she said, and they 
used the una corda all the time. But it didn't do much good. No kidding? 
The hammers were just like you described, except for the little full height 
sliver of felt standing about 3mm tall on the right edge. Someone had even 
gone to the trouble to pull the fallboard and stick a piece of pressure 
sensitive tape backed name board felt (nasty stuff) on the action stop 
block to space the action over. I pulled the felt, brushed down the flat 
top hammers, reassembled, tuned, and moved on. No fix here. Their "budget" 
allowed maintenance tuning of 7 pianos of 22 this semester. I tuned 6, and 
condemned one as hopeless, just like I'd condemned it the year before, and 
the year before that. Eventually, a time quickly approaching, they will run 
clear out of even marginally usable pianos. Most of them are right on the 
edge now.

Sigh.


Ron N


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