[pianotech] Hermann Mayr

[David Stocker]

In such a case, a name and a serial number aren't as helpful as a couple of 
digital pictures sent to your email inbox.

In most of my phone conversations about an older piano, I ask for some 
photos of the outside and inside. I have decided not to charge for looking 
at pictures and responding by email or phone. Caveats about lack of hands-on 
accuracy are given, but after a few thousand pianos, I can tell a lot from a 
couple of pics.

David Stocker, RPT
Tumwater, WA


-----Original Message----- 
From: Rob McCall
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 21:54
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: [pianotech] Hermann Mayr

Greetings,

I have an appointment to look at a newly gifted, well-used and ignored 
upright that says Hermann Mayr on the front and a serial number of 644096. 
In the PPA it only has a single line that says, "St. Petersburg, Russia, 
1870."  They say they have a sticker or other reference inside the piano 
that showed it came from Denmark, and they swear up and down that the piano 
doesn't look older than 30 years. The say the cabinet is beautiful. I had 
them double check the spelling to make sure it wasn't some stenciled PSO.

Did this name get recycled somewhere else in the world?  I can't find any 
other cross-reference for that name. They want to get an estimate to fix it 
up, but I wanted to double check to make sure what I'm getting into. If it 
truly from 1870 and has been refinished, the inside could potentially be 
quite atrocious.

Thanks!

Rob McCall

McCall Piano Service, LLC
www.mccallpiano.com
Murrieta, CA
951-698-1875