It was wonderful to read about Joyce Brite's piano tuning/repair story.
I have one too.....

Once upon a time (c.1975) there was a Knabe Ampico A that lived in
Binghamton, NY.  It was going up for sale at a house sale and a fellow
MBSI member who was in charge of the sale knew that I had wanted one for
a long time.  I put a bid in on the piano and forgot about it.  It came
time to do a show in Chicago and, just before I left I got a call from
the man saying the sale was coming up that weekend (naturally, the
weekend I was doing the Chicago show) and  he'd let me know if I got the
piano or not.

 Well, I called him 'from the road' for the next few days to see if it
was mine.  EUREKA!  I was the successful bidder, BUT, I was informed
that it had to be out of there that weekend!   Since I wasn't going to
be home he offered to remove it for me.

Now, he said he restored pianos and that this one needed new strings and
the drawer rebuilt.  What could I do?  He was good enough to tell me
about the piano, put my bid in and then remove the piano.  I told him to
rebuild it.  A price was agreed upon and I forgot about it for 1-1/2
years.  I knew this work took time and that he was just a one-person
business, like myself.

After a longer time lapse I called to see how it was coming.  I was told
he just couldn't do it, and that I should take the piano back and have
someone else do it.  YIKES!  What to do?  He delivered the piano back in
bushel baskets -- literally!  He had taken it apart, put the parts in
apple baskets, stored the piano on its side (space was at a premium) in a
damp place for over 1-3/4 years!

Somewhere in that time he had re-strung it.  Unfortunately, I learned
later that he had forced larger-than-needed pins into the pin block and
it had cracked in 2 places.

We parted company with a strained relationship, to say the least.  I
found someone locally who rebuilt player pianos in his spare time and
asked him to come over and see if all the parts were there.  We spread all
the parts out on the living room carpet and he determined that they were
indeed all there!  Well, that was a relief!  He also told me he could
rebuild the drawer and get the piano playing.  He got the job.

It sounded okay, not great, but then I'm a music box person and didn't
have a lot to compare the sound to.

I kept it in my living room where the wood stove was... Get the picture?
One night I heard a loud snapping sound together with some sympathetic
vibrations from the strings.  The sound board had cracked in 5 places
from the dry wood heat.

Having made plans to move anyway, I got in touch with a piano man who got
the job of fixing the cracks, repairing the pin block and basically
checking out the rest of the piano.  He had it for 3 years while I built
my new home.

It came back sounding better than before; that was over 10 years ago.
The piano has been tuned regularly twice a year, by a professional tuner
who also 'tweeked' a few bouncing hammers and dampers, up until about two
years ago when I lapsed.  When the pump started making noises I hardly
played it -- so it sat.

I just had a piano tuner in today as I didn't want to let it get too far
out of tune and possibly lose the string flexibility.  She took the
action out and found that

  1) the hammers were fatter at the back end than at the front, and they
were really too big for my piano;

  2) quite a few of the dampers were not functioning;

  3) the tails  of all the hammers were smooth, not rough .  She spent
four hours here reshaping the back of the hammers, taking some of the
'meat' off the back and adjusting the dampers and then tuning.

Guess what!?  No more bouncing hammers, no more non-functioning dampers!
The other piano tuner never touched the hammers, even though I had told
him there were some that were rubbing and bouncing.  There's a difference
between a tuner and a technician!  She charged $35/hour and was worth
every bit of it!

A story with a bad beginning, but a happy ending!  Now all I have to do
is get the pump to quiet down!

Nancy Fratti - Panchronia Antiquities
PO BOX 210 - Whitehall, NY 12887-0210 USA
518-282-9770  or fax: 518-282-9800
Disc & Cylinder Musical Boxes - Musical Box Restoration Supplies