The Bad News Philosophy 101!

[Erwinpiano]

Ron

      Wow did you think of that yourself or did you just make it up.  Sounds
a little tooo profesorly to be  a comin from a piana tooner but I must say I
think I saw flashes of me in a Past(younger life) life when it was sooo much
easier to criticize others. But now that I,m older an more race worn,(been
round da track)I don't feel nearly as compelled to jump on a colleagues work
who is given it his professional best cause I've discovered just how
difficult it is to get them thar preffesional results on a con-sistent
basis.
   Your point well taken and wow your logic is well very professional! Loved
it.

     Best

Dale Erwin


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Nossaman" <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: The Bad News


> Hi Leo,
>
> Good to see you're not letting life get you down.
>
> It's just this sort of "Pandora's Box" phobia that has been responsible
for
> the general lack of evolution in pianos in the last hundred years. If all
> the R&D information behind some of the oddities we see in old pianos (some
> of which worked very well), had been made available to the industry after
> the patent period had expired, instead of setting in a box under the sink
> until the janitor threw it out when the new tenants moved in, we would
have
> a lot better idea of what does and doesn't work in a piano and why. So
much
> hard won information has been lost and wasted, some of it good, some of
the
> good - revolutionary. That's the fate of "trade secrets".
>
> The unconscionably high percentage of professional work that I have had to
> finish, alter, or tear down and re-do to get what I contracted for in the
> first place leads me to wonder how many so called professionals are just
> ignorant no talent clods like myself who are hiding their incompetence
> behind a general non disclosure policy, lest they be found out by their
> captive audience. There will always be do it yourselfers, thank God, who
> will resent being continually helpless and victimized by some clown in a
> "professional's" mask, and attempt to protect themselves through personal
> education. They will muck up a lot of stuff on the way, but if they have a
> working brain cell at their disposal, they will have learned something
> about their capabilities and limitations. Not only that, they will have
> learned an equally valuable something about the capabilities, limitations,
> and legitimacy of the revered professionals they are forced by
circumstance
> to rely upon. They will, as a result, more deeply appreciate the good work
> of a capable professional. The difference between attempting to do
> something yourself, and hiring it done, lies in the perception of the
trade
> off of tool cost and difficulty/unpleasantness of the labor, verses the
> cost of the professional/likelihood of the job being done satisfactorily.
> Learning the difference between the perception and the reality first hand
> makes potentially wiser and more resourceful consumers. If they can do the
> job better than the professional, the professional has no business
> pretending to be a professional. This is too often the case.
>
> Personally, I wouldn't want any part of a job any knuckle dragger who
could
> work a doorknob in under three attempts could shuffle in off the streets
> and do with ten minutes training and a black box. I'd be embarrassed to
> show up and expect to be paid for going through the motions, and would be
> off looking for a more demanding and entertaining job.
>
> But that's just my opinion.
>
>
> Ron N