JENCO CELESTE (a.k.a. “Celestette”) 1950s vintage piano glockenspiel

Описание: JENCO CELESTE: Super rare (1950s vintage), three-octave “table top” celeste. Sounds like a clunky “piano glockenspiel.” Made in Decatur, IL USA. (READ MORE, below...)

This exact type of celeste was used in "Everyday" by Buddy Holly, "Sunday Morning" by the Velvet Underground, and “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. (Also Feist, Björk, and the Beatles, supposedly... Jon Brion plays a 4-octave model at his Largo shows.) Sounds great with the lid down, up, or being waved "in time" (over its resonators) for a vibrato effect. Has fairly uneven "action" (apparently the case with most Jenco Celestes), so it's taking time to learn its idiosyncrasies. When I got it, I had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning it (it still has the original warranty card inside!). One key fell off during shipping (of course, the lowest C key!), which took a while to figure out how to reattach. Cool thing is, all the notes (C5-C8) are perfectly in tune, because it's basically a glockenspiel piano. But it is clunky, mostly in a cool way. I may repair it to reduce some "hammer action" noise (some of the hammers vibrate--audibly--after striking), but perhaps that's more of a "feature" than a bug ;-) Enjoy!

Song: "Determination!" (intro)
(Excerpt from a 2016 scoring project...)
© Dale Turner 2019

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