York called me from a client’s home in Clovis right after our great treasure-seeking adventure under the Kawai 7-foot grand piano. He’d been appraising a Samick studio upright manufactured in 1990 that was owned by Joel Van Ginkel. “I’d appraise it at about $2000,” he said, “but between you ‘n me, he’ll unload the piana’ for a lot less ‘cause he’s movin’ to L.A.”
A few months before York had given me a bum steer, sending me on a wild goose chase to a no man’s land Evangelical Church in East Fresno. My gas-guzzling van had very nearly collapsed on me after I’d found myself on the outskirts of town driving in circles before I’d located an abysmal-sounding, console-size Everett. Its cage-like vibrations in the middle range and mangled hammer assembly caused multiple notes to sound when any one key was depressed. York claimed this 1982 model had been manufactured in a USA based Yamaha plant which he believed gave it added…
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