I'm hoping someone will help me with a quite lovely 1914 Behning grand, 6 feet or so.
It has a pretty case. It has a good sound. It also has a click on D6 which sounds like a loose hammer head.
Okay ... took off the keyslip easily enough. Three screws up into it. Then I went to find key block screws. Oh dear. Very wide sweeping side supports of the legs completely cover the area where one would expect a keyblock screw to be, on both sides. The key blocks are totally firmly installed. There are no visible fasteners. The spring for the soft pedal return is on the left instead of the right. There is a screw in the side of the left key block to set the amount of shift, which at the moment doesn't matter because there's no access to the screw head. The key cover is firmly attached to the key blocks at each end and cannot be removed by itself. It seems obvious that once the key blocks are no longer screwed down, the key cover and both blocks will come out as one piece.
Using a strong flashlight and shifting the action as much as possible, I found that I could push down a metal slat an inch or so back from the front of the keys, which acts as a guide for the action so it shifts evenly (both sides). However, pushing it down in no way allowed me to loosen either key block. There are no fasteners to be seen diagonally, pulling C88 and A0 up a little bit to access them. Remembering one real puzzle box, I looked at the narrow sides of the key cover, where another brand had five or six screws holding it in. Nothing. Looking under the piano at the leg areas we saw normal wedging, but nothing that might let us in. The hammers and keytops have both been replaced. Obviously there is SOME way to get in there!
Are we really required to take off each leg in turn to get the key block screws out? I didn't have the "jack in the box" with me when I tuned. We imagined someone with the secret coming in, sitting down, reaching for something or other, and five seconds later getting into the piano and laughing at us. But someone like this was nowhere to be seen.
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Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon
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