I recently bought an upright piano and the people from whom I bought it said they don't know anything about the piano except that they bought it in Jerusalem and that it is a Russian piano.
I always thought Russian pianos were very stiff but this one plays easily and has a sweet, bright sound.
It has a logo inside that says "Fischer Trade Mark"
Is this the JC Fischer company from New York?
The only thing I could find that resembles a serial or model number was an engraving in the cast-iron plate that seemed to say "VII - 79", perhaps made in 1979?
And then there's what looks like a piano and then perhaps the number "6" or "f.".
Here are pictures of the actual piano:
Any ideas what company made this, where and when?
*UPDATE
OK, thanks for the video. After checking as thoroughly as the video suggested, I found what looks like a serial number stamped into the bottom of the upper front board:
433195
Did a google search but nothing came up. In the list of JC Fischer piano serial numbers, they are indeed 6 digits but the highest they start with is 219.
**UPDATE 2
Well, this is embarrassing. Since yesterday's post, I've discovered the serial number 2 more times! Once stamped into the back edge of the fallboard and once stamped into the bottom edge of the lower front board. I guess I had been looking for a printed number a different color than the surrounding color.
Same number as before: 433195
Looking at the Bluebook of Pianos, it seems that the different companies had an agreement about serial number conventions. Many of them have 1974 pianos starting with serial number 430300 and 1975 with 433400. Could that mean that my piano was made in 1974, and was that company's 2,896th piano?! Or, did they skip numbers to allow for other information to be embedded into the serial number?
***UPDATE 3
This is turning into a detective game. Last night, I discovered the numbers "352" stamped into the sounding board, to the left of the lowest bass strings:
And then on the very back of the two very lowest bass keys I found some other etchings.
In front of the capstan (the cylinder that pushes up on the hammer) it says "39" on both keys:
And behind the capstan, it says "27", I think:
What do all these numbers mean?
The more I take apart this piano the more I discover.