We need a Vice President

Hi Sacramento PTG Members,

We still do not have a Vice President for next year. Gene has done an excellent job and he deserves a break. Vice President is one of the most important position along with the President to keep the Chapter going. Dan Dannefelser would consider the position if our Chapter meets every other month instead of every month to allow him more time to plan for quality technicals. I personally think that this is a good idea.

(A) I would like to find out if anyone in the Chapter has any objections for us to meet every other month and (B) if anybody else is interested to be our Vice President. We need your input. Please feel free to email back to me and I will forward your comments to the Chapter Officers for further discussions.

Thank You

Mabel Chan

Needs work

An old friend of the chapter sent in this great picture. If you like this sort of thing, check out the WARPS (World Association for Ruined Piano Studies) website.

Storing up for the winter

This piano had mice living in it and one of them brought a pistachio inside.

Tuning for car repair

Hi Ted -
I need help finding a piano technician in the Sacramento area who might be willing to exchange skill for skill.

Here is the situation -
Good friends of mine, Johnny and Chelsea Burke, have a piano that desperately needs tuning - from what I understand it is not even playable. Chelsea's health over the past couple of years has been deteriorating and she has recently been diagnosed with fibromyalgia along with another serious condition that keeps her in too much pain to leave the house for any length of time. As a friend I asked if their was anything I could do and the only thing Johnny could think of, knowing I was a music major, was if I knew any piano tuners who might be willing to trade skill for skill. He thinks his wife would enjoy playing the piano if it was in tune (imagine that) and this would give her another option for activity while she is unable to leave the house. Johnny is an excellent mechanic and would be willing to trade work on a vehicle for work on their piano. They live in Rancho Cordova.

If there is anyone who would be interested please contact me at (916) 768-4044 or call Johnny directly at 916 631 7703, or email him at jandcburke@aol.com.

Thank you,
Amy Russell

Ulrich Sauter on soundboard design

On April 26, Ulrich Sauter will give a 1-1/2 to 2 hour lecture titled "Soundboard Design 2". The lecture will be followed by lunch or brunch and entertainment.

The pianists will be Robin Southerland from the San Francisco Symphony and Jazz artist Delbert Bump.

The location is R.Kassman Piano Store at 843 Gilman St Suite B in Berkley 94710. The lecture begins at 10 am.

You must RSVP especially to reserve your food.

The fee is $10; pay at the door or send a check payable to "Sacramento Valley PTG" to:



Gene Nelson

5585 Dragon Springs Road

Placerville Ca 95667

For further information, call Gene at

(530) 677-3366 or (530) 306-2942 (cell)

Or call the store at (510) 558-0765

Searching for a lost Chickering

Here are the details:

• Chickering Grand 1921 (may be dated 1922)
• Serial # 134326
• Case Lot# 258 8545
• Style: G135
• Brown Mahogany, Dull finish
• It originally had a small brass plaque above the keys, noting that it had been awarded to my grandmother Josephine Williams, but the plaque has probably been removed
• Lost approx 20 years ago from a storage facility in the Bay Area (Berkeley/Oakland/Albany/Emeryville area).

If you find the piano, please contact:

pam.kahl@verbal800.com
Home phone: 503.282.0402
Office phone: 503.284.1534
Mobile: 502.706.0259

Ted Kidwell bushes keys the Spurlock way

Kidwell on key bushings

Click on the image to see all the pictures.

Tuner map

Terry Miller made this great map showing where all the PTG members are in Sacramento.

View Larger Map

Poor man's square

This is a very odd piano... downward striking hammers and strings that go horizontally under the keys. No manufacturer's name anywhere I could see.

Yamaha to Buy Boesendorfer: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Yamaha will become the new owner of famed piano maker Boesendorfer, an Austrian bank said Thursday.

In a statement, BAWAG P.S.K. bank said it had reached an agreement with Yamaha over the sale of 100 percent of Boesendorfer shares. No price was specified.

read full article...

Daily Herald - Music failed to soothe beast

It is a chilling question that we have all asked ourselves: What would we do if, God forbid, we had to get a squirrel out of a piano? This very question confronted an animal-control officer in Fairfax County, Va., recently, according to a news report from the Washington Post sent in by roughly two million alert readers. According to this report, the officer was responding to a report of "a squirrel running inside a residence." When the officer arrived, the squirrel "jumped into an open baby grand piano." Fortunately, the officer had the training, the courage, and -- above all -- the musical talent to deal with the situation.
read full article...

NPR Music: The Bowed Piano: Fishing for a New Sound

Morning Edition, February 5, 2008 - What happens when you take a perfectly good invention — one that's been around for several hundred years — and completely rethink it? That's what an enterprising musician and composer named Stephen Scott has done with the grand piano.

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Piano Trebuchet at Burning Man

Thanks to Ron Berry for posting this on the PTG Blog.

A Midlife Obsession with the Piano

MEMOIR

Keys to Happiness ... Ode to Joy

An amateur musician tries to recover the sound of her beloved piano.

SLIDESHOW

Previous Next

Reviewed by Eugenia Zukerman

Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page BW04

GRAND OBSESSION

A Piano Odyssey

By Perri Knize

Scribner. 371 pp. $27.50

"A soul seems to reside in the belly of this piano, and it reaches out to touch mine, igniting a spark of desire within me that quickly catches fire," writes amateur pianist Perri Knize in Grand Obsession.


read full article

Missing Kimball

I got a call from Jim Geiger, a technician in Kentucky. He told me about a woman named Jean Peterson who moved from Sacramento to Oregon. Somehow a Kimball vertical got left behind and no one knows where it is.
It has a cherry finish and is serial number 11309.
If you find this piano please contact Jim Geiger at 606-683-3059.

Kirsi Lassi explains how to tune a birdcage

I met Ms. Lassi on Facebook. She is not just a tuner in Finland — she is president of the Pianotechnician's Association. She mentioned that she sees a lot of birdcage pianos and I asked her to explain how she mutes them during tuning.

Oh yes... the "birdcage" pianos are a bit challenging :) Some of them are just old and not so good, but I've noticed that Julius Bluthner over-damper pianos are actually very good quality. They seem to have made them still, when others had already started the normal action style. I have a few of them at my regular customers, and they are really quite nice to tune. Of course the dampers don't work as well as in normal action, but the sound and quality are pretty nice. I usually put the felt strip between the strings above the damper system, as far as it goes - maybe just one and a half octaves in the middle (and the whole bass part, too). After that I use the long nylon wedge I use for the treble in normal uprights, sticking it in between the damper wires and hammer shanks. It is a bit slow, but doable. After doing it for a while, you sort of get the hang of it, and can move the wedge to the next one just listening to the noise it makes when you scrape it against the strings, knowing where you are with it :) But, usually it takes a bit bending down and trying to see where the strings are, and with the felt strip, looking from the top to see which strings the hammer is hitting, so it's a bit tiring for the back. You should try it one day, especially if you meet a good quality "birdcage" piano. The customer would be so happy to finally get it in tune :) And especially if you happen to see a Bluthner over-damper piano - those are really very nice to work with, compared to all other "birdcage" pianos I've ever met.

New use for a pegboard

A piece of pegboard (with a couple of pieces of wood glued underneath to raise it off the tabletop) is a great way to store screws when you're taking apart an action.

Technology Review: Gibson's Self-Tuning Guitar

It's every guitar player's nightmare: you step onstage, strike your rock-god pose, triumphantly strum the first chord of a song--and discover that your guitar is out of tune.

A new line of instruments from Gibson Guitar now promises to banish this scenario to the dark ages with high-tech self-tuning technology built into the company's flagship electric-guitar models.

read the full article

From Craigslist: left-handed piano

best of craigslist > minneapolis > RARE Left-hand strung piano Originally Posted: Mon, 3 Sep 19:53 CDT

RARE Left-hand strung piano

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Date: 2007-09-03, 7:53PM CDT


This piano is one of only a handful (probably the left hand full) that were built with the high notes "al sinistra" (on the left end) and low notes "al rechta" (on right). These pianos were originally built to be sold in southern hemisphere countries where, because of the perceived "backward" spin of the earth, audio vibrations travel in a counter-clockwise direction.

The reversed placement of the treble and bass keys allows pianists from these southern nations to play northern European piano literature without having to relearn the notes. It does require that the score be transfered to onion skin vellum, laid in reverse on a copy machine and photocopied in reverse so that the music flows from right to left on the page. Several collections of reverse-hand piano literature might be found on yAbe (the southern hemisphere internet auction site, based in Australia.)

This instrument is one of the rare ones located in the U.S. It would fit well in a left-handed house, where right-hand pianos tend to stick out into traffic flow and look out windows with not necessarily the best views. You will need to reverse the hinges on the front door of houses in order for the left-handed piano to fit through the opening and fit around the corner to the parlor. Instructions for this re-hinging process can be found at owa_tajur_kayam.org.

• Location: (Somewhere out there)
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 413152288

Casio keyboard is 2007's top-selling toy

Brisbane, Dec 24 : The hottest selling toy this Christmas is the humble toy piano keyboard, according to Australian retailer Big W.

The Discount department store chain Big W said that classic toys and 'brands of years gone by' are the top buys for children this Christmas.

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