I have been hesitant to enter into this discussion.  The last time
I took part in the MMD about my band organ music on a vintage phono-
graph recording, I got clobbered for days on end from far and wide.
Thankfully I was vindicated in the end.

Time period 1958 to 1960.  In a music store in Smiths Falls, Ontario
Canada, I saw for sale and very much wanted to purchase a small
spinet type piano.  The brand name was Rippen, and all the available
literature, brochures, etc., claimed it was made in Ireland.

The action was made with a lot of plastic.  The strings, pins,
etc., looked like a regular piano and tuned like one.  Cabinet was
a one-piece shell construction, that was held with two clips.  When
released, it would slide off forward and leave the skeleton totally
naked.

An impressive claim was that the piano would stay in tune much
longer than a regular instrument because the "back" was made of
aluminum and would not be affected by temperature and humidity
changes.

There were pictures showing two fashionable ladies moving and
loading this piano and as I remember, the weight was claimed at
175 pounds total.

While not a great musician, I did have a lot of fun playing at that
point in my life, and was finding places that did not have a piano,
or had one that was not fit to play.

I was impressed with the sound, the touch and the easy moving when
I tried it out.  The amount of around three thousand dollars comes
to mind, which I would have been happy to pay -- however, that was
a lot of money for the time, and remuneration for working a session
was most often around ten dollars, a free lunch and some beer!

Seasons greetings from the warm and sunny north -

Ken Vinen