Incompetent "Technicians?"

[Avery Todd]

List,
   Don't you just love "tooners" who create business for you with the poor
quality of work they do? I enjoy being able to make the customer happy and,
of course, making the extra money but I just wish there weren't people "out
there" in my profession who still make this type of job necessary. What
makes it even worse (to me) is that it was done by someone I know.
   I'm just finishing up a Steinway L which "supposedly" had new hammers
(they aren't) installed less than a year ago. They're too yellowed (not
bad, but not new white) to be new and they've been filed poorly with ridges
left on the strike point and on the back side. They look like a half-way
decent set that came off another piano which *did* have new hammers put on
and then reused by pinning the old shanks and hammers to the old flanges.
   The traveling was non-existent. I would guess that 98% of the traveling
was wrong. Almost every hammer that moved wrong had paper on the wrong
side. I had to remove that and then re-travel. It was almost as if someone
had traveled the hammers to try and make them hit all three strings (most
were not) instead of
in a straight line.
   After all that, a LOT of burning, of course.
   Then hammer filing (again) because most hammers won't be hitting the
strings in the same place they were.
   Then of course, fitting to the strings, re-regulation, etc., etc.
   HOW DO PEOPLE GET AWAY WITH S***** WORK LIKE THIS? And still another
action coming in next week with the same type of problems.
   Well, off my soapbox and back to work.

Avery

_____________________________________
Avery Todd, RPT
Moores School of Music
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-4893
713-743-3226
atodd@uh.edu
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