[pianotech] Imagine

[Susan Kline]

The best possible answer for whom? Certainly not for a customer
who cannot afford another piano, as many cannot these days.

What caused me to be perceived as professional for the first half
of my thirty+ year career was to do the work which my customers needed
to have done, at a price they could afford, offering non-shabby
long-lasting repairs to shabby instruments -- sometimes unreasonably shabby
instruments. <shudders slightly>

As the years passed more three-legged pianos showed up than before.
Then they got longer and longer and more and more slender, till I
hardly remembered the years up to my elbows in grime and moth
and mouse turds and old broken worn out actions and pedals --
but I don't regret them. Never that. I did some really neat work.

sssssssssssssssssssnnnn



On 11/11/2010 9:15 PM, Tom Rhea, Jr. wrote:
> Thanks, Ron, for taking the high road.  What will make all of us to be
> perceived as professional is that we can explain to our customer when a
> shabby repair on a shabby instrument is not what we're about, and that our
> customer deserves the best possible answer even when it means that we don't
> get the check.
>
> Tom Rhea
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
> Of Ron Nossaman
> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2010 12:07 AM
> To: pianotech at ptg.org
> Subject: [pianotech] Imagine
>
>
> I wonder about the current thread on split bridge repair. Is it worth
> fixing or not? If so, wouldn't you make a new bridge? It's easier than
> recapping in situ, and a real fix. The other options are, at best,
> lesser approaches. I confess, I don't understand the attitude that the
> piano is absolute junk, but the owner wants it fixed, and has no money,
> so the tech should do the shabbiest repair possible to appease a
> customer who has no idea what the choices made actually mean, as long as
> the tech can make a buck doing it. Is there no line beyond which NO is
> the right answer? Can't we decline to do junk repairs on junk pianos as
> a matter of professional pride and ethics, or are these outdated
> concepts when a check is to be had? I understand that we don't always
> have the luxury of high level choice, but shouldn't we at least try to
> appear to be possessed of professional standards to some degree? Or is
> it all just the chance to generate income, regardless of how? How does
> this serve either us, or our profession in the long run? I read all
> sorts of whining that we aren't taken seriously as true professionals,
> and we don't get the pay we deserve as such, followed by suggestions for
> repairs that anyone aspiring to professional status would, or at least
> should, have nothing to do with.
>
> Baffled, long and often,
> Ron N
>
>
>