[CAUT] beginning luck

[Ron Nossaman]

While I have no delusional hope it will make any difference, being 
ignored the first time, I'll make one more attempt.

Jim Busby had been talking to me for a couple of years about doing a 
redesign/rebuild on one of the BYU pianos. His idea. He's played my B at 
Rochester and liked it. We talked about it again at Grand Rapids, and I 
pointed out that local voicing tastes at BYU were very loud and bright 
sitting at the piano, and there's no way he would voice one of my pianos 
to match. No problem, according to him.

A couple of years later. when the piano was about to come in to the 
shop, I brought it up again. I told him and Keith Kopp that I was 
concerned with the way the piano would be received, and offered to do 
them a more conventional rebuild that would sound more like everything 
else they had. "No, no, we want one done your way" was the answer. The 
customer's call.

We eventually worked out an estimate that would fit their allotted 
budget, so we brought the piano in.

The belly was pretty straightforward, with no surprises, and I stripped 
the inner rim while I had it apart to facilitate later refinishing. That 
wasn't in the budget or on the estimate, but I thought it advisable and 
offered to do it. I needed the work, and was glad to get the job, so it 
seemed like a nice gesture.

The action was really ugly. We were reusing the wippens, as a cost 
concession, but someone had bent the rep springs up badly, so I spent 
half an uncompensated day taking the wips off, straightening springs, 
centering the screw adjustments, rough calibrating the springs, and 
reinstalling the wips. No prior warning about this.

We elected to recover the backchecks rather than replace them because it 
was a little cheaper. As it turned out, these had been replaced with 
long heads, and were 10mm too high, with the hammer tails strangely 
contoured to make them work. I replaced them, so I could do the hammers 
right. No prior warning about this.

Key leads had been removed, and others partially drilled to adjust 
weights. Capstans had been moved, and, as I recall, the action ratio was 
almost 6:1. Re-balancing and re-engineering the action wasn't in the 
estimate, so I got it to work with hammer weight. I had no prior warning 
about this.

The keys were very badly eroded throughout most of the keyboard. I asked 
about it, and was told "Do what you have to do". I couldn't send it back 
like that with my name on it, so I ate another couple of days filling 
key sides. No prior warning about this.

The key ends were chopped up, and all different heights. I have no idea 
why, but someone had chisel split them to random heights, and shimmed 
the lifter felt up to somewhere near level. One more thing I had to fix 
that wasn't on the estimate. No prior warning about this.

  When I do work for a small educational institution, I get to talk 
directly to the people making the decisions, and we can discuss pros and 
cons directly and thoroughly so everyone knows what's what. Doing work 
for a large institution, I'm at the mercy of the tech who arranges the 
thing. I don't get to talk to the decision makers directly, and have to 
rely and trust in the in house tech to pass on my information and 
concerns to the appropriate people. I have to rely on the tech to 
accurately and honestly represent not only my proposed work to the 
administration, but also the piano to me for an accurate estimate, so 
everyone knows where they stand going in. To date, the only instance in 
which this has failed utterly is at BYU.

The remaining problem is political. The piano is as loud and projects as 
least as well into the hall as the bright one it was compared to when I 
was there. It just doesn't sound as loud sitting at it. This is all as I 
described it to Jim and Keith before the work was done. They did have 
prior warning of this, more than once, and were fine with it before the 
fact.

So you folks press on with your witch hunt as you will, but at least you 
now have a few facts to work with.
Ron N