Wurly Warranty Situation

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/11/00 2:20:30 PM Central Daylight Time, A440A@AOL.COM 
writes:

<< I must disagree,  there are instruments built and sold with the absolute 
 minimum of engineering, execution, and service.  These are instruments 
 designed to meet a low market price point with the least expense, and they 
 are junk.  Every possible way of building them cheaply is exploited, and the 
 expected life of these pianos is quite short for the sellers.  
Unfortunately, 
  the buyers are often thinking they have made a life-time investment, and 
 don't understand why after a year or two, the service costs begin escalating 
 until finally, they cannot afford to maintain the piano at all. 
     Giving an honest appraisal of what these things are worth is not 
 "bashing" all brands and all technicians, it is an attempt to keep customers 
 from tossing their hard-earned money into a bottomless pit.    >>

Hmmm,

Let's see, I have two very long term customers (about 15 years) who have 
these same kinds of Wurlitzer grands.  They both have nice, big, beautiful, 
well-kept houses and they both have me come twice a year.  I have always kept 
their pianos clean, well-regulated, voiced and tuned at standard pitch all of 
this time.  I have never noticed any manufacturer's defects or ever made any 
warranty claims on either one.

Now, given the indisputable fact that Ed is *always* right about these things 
and that we should listen to *him* because *he* never tunes "junk", I guess I 
am going to have a far different and sad story to tell these customers the 
next time I go to see them.  "Sorry to have to tell you this, lady, but what 
you thought all along was a piano is actually junk.  I refer to a report from 
Ed Foote, the final authority on piano quality from the center of the 
universe, Nashville."

And then there was the Wurlitzer console that I tuned in the basement of a 
church this morning.  The lady (who knows me well and for whom I've tuned the 
two pianos in her home for years) said to me, "We were told this piano had a 
cracked soundboard".  Without hesitation and without even looking, I replied, 
"No, ma'am, that's not even possible because it has a laminated soundboard 
which cannot crack."  I added, gratuitously, "It seems to me that some of 
these people who bash perfectly fine instruments like this and others such as 
Kimball won't last nearly as long as the pianos they are condemning."

I looked the piano over, found nothing wrong at all, not even any splitting 
bridges and proceeded to tune.  In the treble, I found a few slow jacks which 
responded immediately to a few drops of Protek.  One fallboard knob had 
fallen off and I replaced the missing screw.  The piano was tuned to standard 
pitch using the temperament considered unethical by some but which somehow, 
takes advantage of the so-called "poor scale design" and leaves the 
instrument sounding downright sweet sounding and a pleasure to listen to.

Oh, yeah, there were a couple of those very strong false beating strings.  
They matched the description in the original post.  I pressed them with my 
false beat eliminator, got some improvement and with very carefully tuned 
unisons, I left the piano sounding very nicely tuned.  The unisons sounded 
about as good as some Steinways I have tuned which also can and do have this 
same problem.  I announced when finished that I couldn't find any real 
problems at all with it and that I didn't understand why people who make 
their living doing this kind of work would say such bad things about the very 
essence of their business.

I already deleted the original post of this thread but my advice would be to 
forget about warranty service, twist a couple of those buzzing bass strings, 
tighten the plate bolts, tap the strings lightly, solve the minor problem 
with the dampers, tune the best unisons you can without too much struggle or 
spending too much time and tell the lady what a nice piano she has and 
collect your money.

Just remember, you are not in one of Ed Foote's recording studios and what is 
relevant to him there usually will not apply to most other situations.  You 
can count on that.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin