The general meeting for this month will be held on Tuesday, October 12, starting at 7 p.m. at:

Please note: Frank and Camille's will now be closing at 8 p.m. The meeting must begin promptly.

This month's technical will be an open forum discussion on pitch-corrections, one of the topics most requested by our members. Methods of pitch-raising, pitch-lowering, and preparation will be addressed, as well as potential risks and problems, in order to achieve a stable precision tuning on a badly neglected piano.

The Executive Committee will meet prior to the general meeting at 5 p.m. at the Olive Garden Restaurant, 1120 Old Country Road, Westbury, diagonally across the street from Frank and Camille's.

We sadly announce the passing of our old friend and colleague Webb Phillips on Thursday, August 12 at the nursing home where he has resided for the past year and a half. Webb was 83 years old. His wife Ruth, President of Allied Piano, and friends were at his side. Webb and Ruth have visited and given technical presentations at our chapter meetings many times over the years, and Allied Piano has been a constant sponsor of our chapter and newsletter.

Although most aspects of piano design have been quite standardized for a long time, occasionally we encounter a manufacturer who tries a unique or unusual deviation from the norm. I recently serviced an old A.M. McPhail grand which had a very clever agraffe design. Each agraffe was about twice the usual height and cylindrical in shape, with a flattened side facing the tuning pins. What truly distinguished its design, however, was a slot in the top, in the orientation of the strings. The only tool needed to install the set was a common flat-blade screwdriver, and not a special agraffe inserter. Perfect square alignment to the strings was easily achieved as well (for equal speaking lengths of each unison), by positioning the easily visible slot parallel to the strings.