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Spinet
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==Pianos== The spinet piano, manufactured from the 1930s until recent times, was the culmination of a trend among manufacturers to make pianos smaller and cheaper. It served the purpose of making pianos available for a low price, for owners who had little space for a piano. Many spinet pianos still exist today, left over from their period of manufacture. The defining characteristic of the spinet was its ''drop action'' (sometimes called ''indirect blow action''). In this device, the keys did not engage the action directly; rather they pulled upward on rods called "stickers", which in turn pulled upward on levers located below the level of the keyboard, which in turn engaged the [[action (piano)|action]]. The stickers were sufficiently long that the hammer heads (the highest part of the action) ended up at roughly the same vertical level as the keyboard. Thanks to the drop action, spinet pianos could be made very small; the top of a spinet rose only a few inches above the level of the keyboard itself. However, according to piano author [[Larry Fine (pianos)|Larry Fine]],{{sfn|Fine|2001}} the cost in quality was considerable. The stickers were "often noisy and troublesome". Moreover, to make room for them, the keys had to be made shorter, resulting in "very poor leverage" and thus a poor sense of touch and control for the player. Lastly, the very short strings of the spinet resulted in a narrow range of harmonics and thus in poor tone quality. The spinet was also the bane of piano technicians. Concerning the difficulty of servicing them, Fine writes <blockquote>Spinets ... are very difficult to service because even the smallest repair requiring removal of the action becomes a major ordeal. Each of the connecting stickers has to be disconnected and tied up to the action and all the keys have to be removed from the piano before the action can be lifted out.<ref>Not all spinets had this design; some utilized a method of making a railing for the rods to terminate sticker connection to the keys. This is commonly found on older Baldwin and Wurlitzer pianos and is easier to service.</ref></blockquote> <gallery widths="200px" heights="200px"> File:AcrosonicSpinetPiano.jpg|Spinet piano made by [[Baldwin Piano Company|Baldwin]] and sold under the brand name Acrosonic. Date of manufacture unknown. File:Gulbransen Spinet Piano.jpg|A spinet piano manufactured by Gulbransen File:Gulbransen Spinet Piano - bottm of action mechanism & iron frame.jpg|Detail of the interior structure of the Gulbransen spinet shown above. The drop action, lying below the level of the keyboard, can be seen, as well as the extreme angling of the strings needed to provide sufficient length of strings within the limited case height. Click on image for expanded view. </gallery> ===History=== According to piano historian Arthur Loesser (1954), the first spinet piano was offered to the public in May 1935, by an American manufacturer Loesser does not identify. However, according to the Blue Book of Pianos, this manufacturer was Winter and Company (which eventually became part of the [[Aeolian Company|Aeolian-American Corporation]])<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bluebookofpianos.com/agesa.htm#Aeolian|title=Aeolian β American Corporation β Founded 1932|website=The Blue Book of Pianos|access-date=26 November 2018}}</ref> who sold this piano as the Winter "Musette".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://antiquepianoshop.com/online-museum/winter|title=Winter|website=Antique Piano Shop|date=3 September 2017 |access-date=2 November 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bluebookofpianos.com/discontinued.html#WINTER%20&%20CO|title=Pianos Discontinued after 1980|website=The Blue Book of Pianos|access-date=7 November 2018}}</ref> The Musette, along with its spinet cousins, were initially a success, being the only kind of piano that many people could afford in the depths of the [[Great Depression]]. (According to Loesser, the price could be less than $300, "about twenty-five percent lower than ... a small upright of 1924.") Loesser notes that the spinet was not entirely new, as very small pianos had been manufactured at various times in the 19th century.{{sfn|Loesser|1991|p={{page needed|date=March 2020}}}} After the 1930s, many people still continued to purchase spinets; a 1947 study showed that about 50 percent of all pianos sold during that production year were pianos strung vertically of {{convert|37|inches|m}} in height or less.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bluebookofpianos.com/spin1947.htm|title=Beginning of Modern Styling β Pianos and Prices|website=The Blue Book of Pianos|access-date=20 April 2018}}</ref> The spinet enjoyed decades of popularity after the 1930s, but production was halted in the early 1990s.
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