Piano Designers are Sadists

[Michael Jorgensen]

Think I'm Paranoid?,
     Why do they design wood dowel letoff buttons coupled with extra
long jack regulating screws?
     Why do they design pianos which are hard to figure out how to get
open, humiliating even the most experienced techs?
     What's the real reason they invented the sostinuto?
     Why are lid props placed so you can't put even the shortest tuning
lever on the top pins parallel to the string?
     Why are console lids designed to go "Bang" when you close them so
the customer thinks you hit their piano with a sledge?
     Why do they always play around with the specs on action replacement
parts just enough to fool the tech into still using them, yet just
enough to cause all kinds of problems?  (that must have taken some
careful study!)
     Why do they design fall boards to catch pencils and shoot them
right into the capstans where they can do the most harm?
     Why do they have sixteen screws to remove an action with the two
fall board ones too close to the the case with end blocks carefully
designed to bounce these microscopic screws on the floor to hide in the
shag rug or down the crack along the key?
    Why do replacement hammer shanks have extra long drop screws to hit
the pinblock and give you three choices--cut em off, plane down the
pinblock or lower the drop one inch?
    Why do they put any locks on pianos? 
    Why do console/studio fallboards have to make it impossible to
regulate capstans without removal and then be a mental test on how to
put them back? (afew you can tip up, but watch out they're designed to
fall and kill your wrists)
    Why do they design lids and capo bars to force us to use longer
tuning hammer tips and get poorer results?
    Why don't they use the right amount of counterbearing so the piano
can be easily tuned and stable?
    Why design an action so you can't get a wippen out without removing
all kinds of stuff?
    Why do they design music racks held together with microscopic screws
which can't carry any load and cannot be "redesigned"?
     Why do they design the tenor strings to have such low tension they
go wild one month into a weather change? (Who cares about an even tenor
break if the thing is going to have bar room octaves that fast!)
     Why use those buzzy continuous hinges anywhere on a piano?
     Why don't they support a grand music desk somewhere along its 
length instead of just the two ends using only a quarter inch of wood?
     Why would anyone design a lid so to be opened the piano has to come
away from the wall?
     All pianos should have toe blocks!
     Why can't the Japanesse and Americans all use the same wire size
number for the same size string?
     Why do the Russians reverse the order of the tuning pins in the
bass so the tuner gets confused about which pin to be on and breaks a
string?
     Why do they design trapwork to rub on each other?
     Why do they design it so the pedal rods have to fall out of place
when the action is removed?
     Why do they design pedal lyres to come apart?
     Why do they design the braces to fall out?
     Why did they ever have to invent the una-chorda pedal?  can't
pianists learn to play soft without it? doesn't it add an awful lot of
cost with very little gain?
     Then there's those fake pedals, connected to the same trap lever!
I had one customer freaked with amazement when they saw that!
     

Boy am I glad it's Friday!