Tuesday, Sept. 17th Edinburgh Newtown

A good but very sour big German parlour grand – Rönisch #39662 (1905) – tuned from 438 to concert pitch, and addressed damping problems.  An Edinburgh shop restrung it leaving jumpy but tuneable tuning pins, a false treble (the bridge isn’t perfect so each string emits a faint beat wreaking havoc with fine tuning up there) and poor damper timing (each damper is supposed to lift about half-way up the hammer stroke, and the pedal is supposed to lift the dampers simultaneously).  I retimed some and gave one a haircut where it had been damaged.  Later Christina should have all the dampers regulated.  In New York we hire moonlighters from the Steinway assembly line, the best of whom is Artur Ivanov http://avpiano.com.  In Edinburgh I’d recommend trying Steinway’s Norman Motion and his co-worker Alistair Edmondson.

The pedal lyre is also falling apart so we found some useless German books to prop it up.  I left a note on the top: “Do Not Move Even One Inch before calling Ben Treuhaft.”  First you have to remove the books, otherwise the lyre will crack off.  Dampers are tricky.

Also one of the action stops deep in the keybed was unglued causing a huge rattle.  I glued it back in.  The action stops a few millimetres too far out causing the top few notes to be dead because they miss their correct striking point.  To be addressed in future.