[CAUT] SD10 - Final thoughts

[Jim Busby]

Ron O., Ron N, Del, All,

After contemplating all the posts, we're planning a rebuild of this SD10. Thanks to all! 

Ron, your thoughts on "why" institutions don't usually go for rebuilds/rebuilders (below) are at the heart of an important issue. The "bean counters" especially seem to deem a rebuilt as a second class citizen, and overcoming this ignorance can appear nearly impossible. The other dynamics you mention are real as well. 

However, with the current economic woes, selling this may be easier to do, if the cost is far enough below the cost of a new 9'. And that's really sad, because if a piano indeed has "quality craftsmanship" and good design, even if it costs more than "new" it would be well worth it! I'm thinking how great it would be if one of you rebuilt this, and we put it in a hall having pianists think it was "new" how they would most certainly like it. I'm thinking of how we might orchestrate this whole thing. Having piano faculty visit such pianos might help too. Lots to ponder.

Thanks again to all.

Jim Busby BYU


>>>... Without quality craftsmanship good design 
is worth nothing.

One of the major difficulties with institutions, and it has been 
happening throughout my entire 34 year career in the business, is 
that they have this un-informed attitude that once a concert piano is 
worn out it can no longer be returned to the performance levels of a 
new piano, so successive instruments get put further down the 
rehearsal room chain until they are finally disposed of as hopeless 
wrecks. Just a re-string and hammers doesn't return a piano with a 
'dead' board to health. But since hammers and strings is all that 
most institutional pianos ever get in the way of 'rebuilding', the 
myth continues as each instrument works its way down the 
rehearsal-room line to certain-death. Furthermore, to the dealer's 
delight, he/she can load the problems with the traded piano onto the 
last rebuilder who worked on it because, as all dealers know, 
soundboards never die as they grow old, they only sound that way.

The truth is that with many of these pianos, provided that the rim 
hasn't de-laminated and that enough mass of quality wood was used for 
the rim and belly, they can be rebuilt with the best of contemporary 
thinking to transform them into a piano which would simply run-rings 
around the factory fodder which comes from writing another goddamn 
check for another goddamn new instrument. But this story never gets 
to be told, because there's no golden-under-the-table handshake for 
the institutional rep who is negotiating the deal, when he/she is 
dealing only with a rebuilder. The gravy-train goes on while no-one 
gives a damn, because all the right nests are being thoroughly 
feathered.

Ron O. <<<