Birdcage

[Tom Cole]

> 
> << Birdcages are for the birds, NOT piano tuners. Instead of the damper
>  mechanism  (snip)
> 
>  My advice is to forget about birdcage pianos altogether. They are a
>  waste of the tuner's time and talents, when he could-- and should-- be
>  working on something more meaningful, more worthwhile, and more relevant
>  to his profession as a technician who tunes and services "modern" pianos
>  built in the last century, or so.  Leave birdcages to the birds.
> 
>  Les Smith   >>
> 
To give a little perspective to the above, I might add that birdcage
pianos have gotten a bad reputation in the US mainly because so many
containers full of them were imported here and sold by antique dealers
who must have bought them very cheaply, mostly in the UK. Naturally, we
got the worst of the lot and many of them were bought by unsuspecting
people who didn't bother to first hire a technician to survey them. I
had to inform many new owners that their instrument was untunable and
beyond repair. All of the rest were sort of tunable and in need of
rebuilding due to age.

Fortunately, the bulk of them have disappeared, to where I don't know.
Maybe it just seems that way because I manage to screen out most of
them. Whenever I would hear, "I recently bought this antique upright
piano. It has a very beautiful cabinet and just needs a little tuning,"
it invariably turned out to be a birdcage. There are too many good
quality pianos out there to settle for that kind of work.

I think it was Les who once made the suggestion about unwanted American
spinets, English birdcages, etc., which should have been shipped only
half way over the Atlantic. Is that what is meant by drop shipped?

Tom
-- 
Thomas A. Cole RPT
Santa Cruz, CA