Bad Refurbish - Warning - Rant

[Joe And Penny Goss]

Hi Terry, my guess would be amateur night on the key tops but possibly
termites on the pins.  <G>
Joe Goss
imatunr@srvinet.com
www.mothergoosetools.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 3:49 PM
Subject: Bad Refurbish - Warning - Rant


> Tuned an 1893 S&S A1 today for a new client (a church). Within an
estimated
> 10 years the piano has gotten restrung, block, key bushings & tops,
> wips/hammers & shanks. What a disaster. Barely tunable, barely playable.
> Approximately half the tuning pins are leaning so far forward that you
would
> think the string coils would pop right off the top of the pin. I could
> barely keep my tuning lever on them. A few of them were leaning forward
and
> next to one that happened to be angled back - I almost needed a
thin-walled
> tuning lever head to get it on - the pins were almost touching each other
at
> the top (luckily one was pounded into the block farther than the other so
I
> had a little clearance). Don't know that tuning mattered much anyway,
there
> were so many false beats - even in the tenor section (mostly loose bridge
> pins). Now being that some pins were leaning back, and some were leaning
> forward, does this suggest that whoever drilled the block was drunk or was
> there maybe rotten areas in the wood?
>
> How in the world could the pins get so erratic? I'll be going there again
in
> a week or two and will take a picture.
>
> New plastic keytops put on keys without planing down the keystick. Sharps
> had to be raised so high they were being pushed down by the fallboard when
> opened. Many sharps did not go through let-off. I could go on and on. I
stop
> with just one last comment: what crap work.
>
> At PTG conferences I have seen a number of rebuilt pianos that clearly
were
> examples of very fine workmanship. Out in the wild though over the few
years
> I have been servicing pianos I have run across maybe a dozen or two grands

> or high-end uprights that have been restrung/action work/etc. I have yet
to
> see one that I would describe as being "nice". A few might be reasonably
> classified as "marginally acceptable". But most have been poor or worse.
> What's the deal?
>
> I feel marginally better now. Thanks  ;-)
>
> Terry Farrell
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives