informal survey further

[Delwin D Fandrich]

pianoman wrote:

> You know, once a piano has been botched it is more difficult, maybe
> impossible, to get it back right again.  It is not just a matter of
> replacing parts with better quality or a better quality of installing the
> better parts; it is the matter of you do not have the original anything to
> work with.  It is somewhat like the piano has been raped and nothing you
> can ever do will right the wrong.  All you can do is make it better, and
> make sure that you are not guilty of what you have seen done to a once
> wonderful instrument.
> James Grebe
> R.P.T. from St. Louis
> pianoman@inlink.com
> "I am a better tuner now than  ever  before"
>
> ----------

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that "nothing you can ever do will right the wrong." What can the butcher do that can't
be righted with the proper application of skill and money?

The strings and pinblock can be replaced if they're botched up. As can the soundboard and bridges. The action? Hammers,
shanks, wippens, etc., are all replaceable. Even the keys can be replaced if necessary. What does that leave? I guess if
someone took a sledge to the plate, but surely that's not common. I once had a piano that someone has stripped the original
finish with a belt sander. It took some veneering but the end result was quite good. It can all be done, but . . .

You see, we do get these jobs from time to time. Occasionally before they are even put back together -- they come to us in
pieces. They can all be made right. But sometimes -- and here is the rub -- the money that should have been put toward doing
the job right in the first place is now gone. The incompetent has it. And here is where what James says above becomes all too
true. Now some real piano tech somewhere is going to be asked to pick up the tab for the customer's poor judgment. Anyone who
has been in this business very long has heard the sob story. And our natural response is that we want to make it all right.
As well, it often seems that the piano owner thinks that all the rest of us have some kind of moral responsibility to pick up
the pieces left over after some incompetent has taken his money and run.

Well, I'm sorry folks, but this is where I draw the line. I don't think it's my lot in life to absorb either the financial
responsibility or the grief and frustration left over from these jobs. I'll look at the piano and write my estimate based on
what the piano needs at that time. The piano can always be fixed. But if that means redoing the whole job -- and more, if
necessary, to correct those things that have been done wrong, or ruined, in the process -- so be it. I'll no longer try to
patch and paste. From expensive experience I know that in the end these efforts will come back to haunt me. The customer will
quickly forget that the job was first botched by the incompetent he chose and hired and paid, but he will long remember that
I was the last one to work on it. The question I have to ask myself is this: I have only enough time left in this life for
only so many new pieces of work. Do I want this to be one of them? More often than not, of late, the answer is no.

Happy New Year, all!

Del