On 1/24/05 1:03 PM, "Conrad Hoffsommer" <hoffsoco@luther.edu> wrote: > Average age is about 43, but does not take into account rebuilding. How do > youz guyz and galz factor that into the equation? That's a troublesome question. If rebuilding means complete remanufacture (new board, bridges, block, action parts), and it was a quality job, my opinion is that it became a new piano at that point. Lesser degrees of rebuild are harder to assess. It would depend whether the board and block were in "mint condition" (IOW, probably the piano lived in reasonable humidity control), or similar judgment factors. My own opinion is that we (or at least the majority of us) shouldn't be in the business of making pianos last forever. We should be trying to develop a permanent program of gradual and consistent replacement. And our own jobs should focus mostly on keeping our pianos at "performance level" rather than turning old, worn out pianos into new. So with that in mind, and from the point of view of creating a replacement program, I'd give all pianos their actual ages, with the exception of pianos remanufactured as described earlier. Of course, if you have no replacement program at all, and you're faced with an ancient inventory, you gotta do what you gotta do (IOW, rebuild what you have time for). But that doesn't stop you from creating an ideal plan where pianos actually go out the door and are replaced with new ones on a regular and predictable basis. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico
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