Piano Detectives reply

[pianoman]

Dear Les,
I had no idea that you had the health problems you have.  Your postings
have always been informative, witty, and enjoyable to read, and I too love
to live in the past.  I would just love to go back and visit.   Please
continue in your young ways.  Your abilities far exceed what your
infirmities must be. 
Carry on!
James Grebe
R.P.T. from St. Louis
pianoman@inlink.com
"Only my best is good enough"

----------
> From: Les Smith <lessmith@buffnet.net>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Re: Piano Detectives
> Date: Monday, November 10, 1997 4:07 PM
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:
> > Next question, Professor Sherlock Smith: just when did Chickering drop
> > some of its distinctive features? ...
> 
> FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS! I have a close friend who restores vintage
> Thunderbirds. That's it. Nothing else. Ask him a question about  '57 and
> he'll talk your ear off; ask him about a '77, and he'll quickly set you
> straight that there are Thunderbirds and THUNDERBIRDS. The early 'Birds
> are Bill's passion. He doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about the later
> ones and he lets you know it in no uncertain terms. Bill and I are a lot
> alike in that I suffer a similar myopia regarding vintage pianos.
>    I was not just a piano tech, but also a pianist who once studied for a
> concert career. Playing since I was 6, and tuning since I was 14, I have
> spent most my life judging pianos from both sides of the keyboard. How-
> ever the pianist has always led the way and the technician followed, be-
> cause my primary interest has always been those instruments best capable
> of handling the upper reaches of the Classical repertoire.
>   From the beginning, my instincts as a pianist led me to the old pianos.
> They just seemed to sound and play better than the newer ones. Eventually
> I cam to realize that the old Knabes, Stecks, Webers and others which I
> favored as both a pianist and a tech shared one thing in common--they
were
> virtually all built before their respective companies merged into the
> large corpporations like American and Aeolian. It seemed clear that while
> such mergers might be good for the COMPANIES, that wasn't necessarily
true
> of the pianos, themselves. Just look at what happened to Knabe.
>    Under the stewardship of Ernest, William's son, Knabe built some
superb
> pianos during the last quarter of the 19th century. However, when Ernest
> died the future of the firm was passed on to his two sons, Earnest, Jr. &
> William lll. In short order they decided to merge Knabe into part of the
> then forming American Piano Co. Earnest, Jr. became the APC's first
presi-
> dent, William lll, it's first VP. They lasted one year and then walked
> away from their grandfather's and father's firm, leaving it's fate in the
> hands of others. They went on to form the immortal Knabe Brother's Piano
> Co. and were never heard from again. Neither was the APC Knabe. Such sce-
> narios played themselves out with increasing frequency as the century un-
> folded. 
>    For this reason, I consider such questions as when did Chickering drop
> their sectional pinblocks, or scrrew-in damper system; Weber, their tun-
> able duplex scale; Steck their individual agraffes; Knabe, their mitered-
> in pinblocks,; or even Fischer, those nifty solid-brass key pins--all
done
> for reasons of post-merger corporate expediency and product-line
homogenu-
> ity-- to be irrelavant, because my interest has always been those
pre-mer-
> ger instruments that still retained those distinctive characteristics
> which made a Chickering a Chickering, a Weber a Weber and a Steck a
Steck.
> I suppose, however, that if one considered an Edward Gibbonesque
chronical
> of the devolution of the American piano over the last 90 years to be a
> desirable thing, that the techs who regularly rebuild such pianos could
> pool their acquired knowledge and write a difinitive work on exactly how
> the first-class pianos became second class; the second-class pianos,
third
> class; and then those third-class pianos extinct, but why bother? What
re-
> mains of the US piano industry today resembles Hiroshima AFTER we dropped
> the bomb. To those who haven't noticed, the Fat Lady is warming up in the
> wings; Yogi Berra is dressed in street clothes, ready to go home; young
> pianists will grow up thinking that Knabe's first name is Young-Change;
> and nothing will ever again be as it once was. Never.	
>    I am no longer able to work as a piano tech, nor even play. Three
> storkes have left me lucky to be able to knock out an occasional e-mail
> at the computer, but I still prefer to remember American pianos as they
> once were. I've longed believed that the finest pianos ever made were
> built right here in the US between about 1875-1915. And the the best
> efforts of the likes of Steinway, Chickering, Knabe, Weber, Steck,
Richard
> Gertz and a few others reflected standards of excellence in design, con-
> struction and philosophy which have been irretrievably lost with the pas-
> sage of time. Those were the pianos I chose to play; those were the
pianos
> I chose to work on. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of some superb
> techs who share my sentiments, enough meticulously-restored examples of
> those old, benchmark instruments survive today that they can "speak" on
> their own behalf with far more eloquence than I. All one has to do is
> listen
>    An old, wise Greek dude once observed that happiness lies in doing as
> an adult, that which you enjoyed doing when you were young. That's cer-
> tainly been true in my case with vintage pianos and in my friend Bill's
> case with vintage Thunderbirds. Plato might have added, however, that 
> it's probably a good idea not to take ourselves too seriously, because
> in the end, nothing lasts. Nothing. Least of all arrogance. Just ask the
> Knabe brothers!
> 
> Les Smith   
>