mysterious damage

[Paul Mulik]

Hello list,

Earlier this week I tuned 3 pianos for a school music festival, two
Hamiltons and one Kimball.  All were at least 25 years old, and in addition
to the typical abuse that school pianos take, each showed signs of previous
incompetent repair work, which I was later told was done by a former music
teacher who attempted to do the repairs himself.  To undo all his mistakes
would have taken hours -- but that's another story.  I was being paid only
to get them tuned and ready for the next day's festival.

The first Hamilton was missing two hammers -- not just the hammers, but the
butts and everything.  They had obviously been removed by the previous
"technician" for some reason (broken shanks, maybe) and never replaced.
They were for B6 and C7.  Since the piano was going to be used the next day,
my temporary solution was to replace them with the parts from B7 and C8,
since I figured the former notes would be required more often than the
latter.  If anybody has an old junk Hamilton action with parts they'd be
willing to sell, please let me know (naturally I checked inside the bottom
of the cabinet for the missing parts -- no luck -- this was easy to do,
since the bottom panel was missing!).

Now, to the second Hamilton.  Action was OK, but one treble string was
missing.  By a strange coincidence, it was the B6/C7 string -- same place as
on the first piano.  I chose not to replace it; I figured it would have been
badly out of tune by the next day, so it would be better to replace it next
time I came out.

Now for the third piano, the Kimball (which did not have a Schwander action,
btw).  A quick look at the action revealed mismatched, obviously older,
hammers on two notes.  You guessed it: B6 and C7.  My first impulse was that
the other "technician" had taken parts from the first Hamilton and put them
in this Kimball, but the butts were original, only the shanks and hammers
had been replaced (crookedly, but they worked), so these couldn't have been
from the first piano.

Now for the mystery: can anybody offer a theory as to why all three pianos
suffered damage to the same two exact notes?

--Paul Mulik