mysterious damage

[Maggie Jusiel]

The only thing that came to mind was that he broke parts on two pianos
trying to scavenge from them to fix the third...?

> 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
>
>