Over the years, technicians have improved their willingness to help others learn. 40 years ago there seemed to be this attitude or, maybe more of a fear of helping. Maybe it was a fear of losing business or a fear of more competition, whatever. But, when we help someone to do the best they can do, we have better technicians and less flakes for the most part anyway. I remember taking in old uprights for learning on. Lots of them. Junky ones with potential. I remember one in particular. It had no hammers. None. The bass bridge was split, needed replacing. Needed new bass wires too. Every hammer had been broken off and tossed away. Some kids busted it all up. There was not even one, original hammer in place and no hammer line to go by at all. My dad figured this would be a great piano for me to learn on. Boy, was it ever! I had to drill out the shanks and replace all 88 of them. I figured, I might as well replace the hammer flanges at the same time, they were probably all messed up too, so I did. I had no idea how to figure out a hammer line at that point in my career. My dad helped me with that one by using masking tape to carefully line it across the length of the bass, tenor and treble area where we could see clean hammer marks from where the hammers had been striking the strings. As we neared the higher treble, he cut the tape smaller and smaller in width. Seemed like it took forever. Eventually, we had the new flanges on, shanks trimmed and installed, hammers lined up, more shank trimming for height adjustment for the hammers, hammer traveling but, by golly, if that piano didn't sound like a million bucks when we were done with it. It was also the one and ONLY piano that I completely refinished by myself. NO THANK YOU. Never again! Too much fricken work! Stinky too. Anyway, I tuned and serviced that piano for many years after that, until the lady sold it, I think. Haven't seen it since. Wonder where it is now? I still service a couple of those old uprights that I re-did back in my younger years. They still sound pretty darned good for 100 year old pianos. Jer -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of jimialeggio Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 12:23 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] WIll-- Learning stuff The pianos that I have learned the most from are the ones that kicked my ass- Will Truitt Amen. In the shop, on my lonesome, I'm really comfortable non-judgmentally taking the licking and then strategizing on how to learn form it and improve things. In the shop, I know that failure treated thoughtfully is a friend. The trick for me on this has been to be more comfortable going public with the failure. When outside, public input is required I easily attach negative meaning to the disclosure...emotional meaning; what a useless, counterproductive, creativity sapping, unnecessary, @#$%^ pain in the butt. Jim Ialeggio grandpianosolutions.com 978- 425-9026 Shirley, MA >
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