serviceguy
Well-Known Member
Does this look like is worth the asking price?
It just caught my eye on my local Facebook group, I thought I would ask, you never know it turned up being the Stradivari of pianos! Can’t even really play piano, I used to play the accordion when I was a kid until I was bullied out of it by other kids in the neighborhood, not really a popular instrument at the time. Always regretted caving in to other people stupidity to my own disadvantage! I was told I was really good, we’ll never know now!@serviceguy how bad do you want it? Based on the condition of the keys (yellowed) and the case (chipped/beat to hell), it's like to have some broken action pieces, and perhaps moth-bitten felt (hammers/dampers/etc).
Personally, I'd pass, since you'll have to have it tuned after moving, and it'll probably break 1 or 2 strings when they tune it. Not expensive to replace, per se, but also probably not worth it. People be giving pianos away all the time, in better condition, too.
I do but it's in Italy, similar to this, a pretty basic piano accordion 80 button model. I was going to eventually transition to a button type but never made it. Last time I tried to play the right/left hand and opening/closing coordination was still there but my music reading skills are gone...If you still have the accordion (or a concertina, even better) I'll find a piano for you.
Love the bike. Screams for a belt drive...I received the spokes I needed to finish the front wheel a couple of days ago, and I got to it yesterday.
Today, I got a ~11 mile ride under my legs, and near the end, I--again--found myself falling back into the groove of single speed. Of interest, is that I managed to fix the issues that I was having with the hastily-setup saddle (it was tiled forward/loose, which meant that it was creaking/worthless for sitting on, even when I could) the first time I 'rode' it--for all of 20 minutes when I happened to poke through the outskirts of Allaire on the way home, and noted that it was sopping wet--even though I (again) winged tightening it, and it wasn't tight enough. CREAAAAAK CRAAAACK CLICK. Eventually it slid back and wedged in the saddle clamp/stopped doing it. I fixed it when I got home, cause screw it, I was only out for an hour. I can't remember why I put the bell where the shifter was, but it served very well as a reminder to get up and pedal when I kept hitting it [DING. DING. DING DING] for an easier gear. I haven't used clipless pedals in several years/bikes, and it showed. I kept hitting the frame with my heel/trying to rotate my ankle out more, so I had to fix that when I was done, too. I'm sure I'd have hurt myself for longer than an hour, but I didn't, so[...]. Anyway, I noticed that my technique hopping the bike was greatly improved after years of flats, so I'm going to chalk that up for a win. The "Pike" (and I call it that because it's a Pike 29+ model, which is really a Lyrik that has been traveled down to 120) is a perfect fork for this, tons of support, and a better ride even than when I was sitting 99% of the time.
I also have started to notice something interesting...for the longest time, I've had problems getting my heart rate to consistently average in the 150s, but over the last month or so, my average is creeping up from the low 140s, and I'm not feeling like crap doing it. So...yay me, I guess?
Love the bike. Screams for a belt drive...
Wire length would have exactly nothing to do with warmup time. nor, really, would be capacitor charging. Warmup time for vacuum tubes would be the limiting factor. A vacuum tube then was what a transistor would be today.We haven't owned a tube organ since I was very young, and they obviously don't make them anymore, so take this with a grain of salt.
If I recall correctly, our organ had 6-8 tubes that helped to control where the flow of electricity went in the organ (these are individual/combinations of stops--or sounds--the organ can make). On top of that, there was about a thousand feet of wire in the organ we had (Hammonds were a bit less complicated than church organs, so that weren't quite so heavy), and more than a small handful of large capacitors. My understanding is that between the capacitors needing to charge, the tubes needing to warm up (they are kind of like incandescent light bulbs--not immediately fully functional), and the obscene amount of wire, it took a bit of time. Anyway, that's how the technician explained it to 7-year-old me.
Our later organ--bought from the church when they replaced it--was similar, even though that was 'solid state' (no tubes, but common microcircuits in organs weren't in use at that time), but it had at least 3x the wiring as the old organ (weighed roughly 800 pounds), and quite a few more stops. The umbilical (it's not fair to call it a "power cord") was a bundle of various wires that was ~15 millimeters thick.
Compared to a modern electric organ: using computerization/miniaturization, it is the same size, but weighs about 250 pounds. It still needs time to work, but that's because it has a computer in it, now.
@johnbryanpeters I wouldn't think length of wire has anything to do with it, being that power transmission is mostly instantaneous, but 20-something-years-ago clouds the memory, ya know?
The capacitor thing, I'm not so sure. The main caps in that organ were roughly half the size of a 21700 cell, and there were quite a few--at least one for each stop (21 in all). Remember pulling apart disposable cameras to get at the capacitor in there...these were a good bit bigger. My education took a totally different route, and while I am competent enough to replace many of those electronics (at least then, before miniaturization hit), they might as well be black boxes. Yes, resistors resist voltage, transistors amplify/switch, diodes block it, capacitors store it temporarily, but designing a circuit--let alone sussing out the function of the parts--forget about it. I only recall what the tubes in our first organ did because the organ still worked without them, just not all of the settings. That was back before the flood of tubes that came into the country from Russia, and the best the tech could offer was "if you hold on to it, maybe I can find some good tubes from another instrument". It was not a hopeful proclamation. Shame too, as that original organ was a rotary, and had quite a nice sound (even though compared to a pipe organ that it was trying to emulate, it was not).
Incidentally, said second organ is languishing unused due to an accident when it was moved (the umbilical was damaged, and the company that made it, Roger, doesn't have diagrams from back then). If anyone wanted it for free, I'd be happy to facilitate it. Maybe some day I can take a few pictures of the inside when I visit my parents.
send pics of damage - while i don't want it, you know how i like to fix stuff....
did a lot of tube stuff with my Dad - he was a radio guy in the army. mostly testing and replacing - what else was there?
will send a pic of the electro-mechanical workings of my puck bowler!
i'm surprised it doesn't have a vac component.
we had a home organ that had a mechanical tremolo (i think it was tremolo) it spun at a variable speed and opened and closed a door
allowing sound out of the box. other than speed, it didn't have any other setting!