Teflon bushings: (was Re: Pinning on new flanges}

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Keith

At 11:48 PM 8/24/2004, you wrote:
>At 10:46 PM -0700 8/24/04, Horace Greeley wrote:
>>Hi, Keith!
>>
>>You left out only one thing - staggering arrogance on the part of the
>>company.  ...  the treatment of technicians in the field was simply
>>execrable...
>
>Hello Horace,
>
>I don't recall ever experiencing or noticing the attitudes you mention 
>above, hence no inclusion of such things in my post.
>
>Sorry to hear your memory prompted such descriptive words, but I'll accept 
>your recollections as being the case for you.

I am not alone...but my experience is perhaps more pointed than most:

In 1968, a college where I was working took delivery of a new D.  Within a 
month, it was completely unplayable.  The action was, quite literally, 
frozen.  After repeated complaints, gradually moving up the ladder, a 
letter arrived from Vince Orlando, who was, at that time, factory foreman 
with some other title (he preceded Joe Bisceglie).  In that letter, Vince 
informed us that the instrument had been perfect when it left Astoria, and 
if, in fact, there was now a problem, it was because the technicians 
currently working on it were completely incompetent/etc.  As you might 
imagine, this letter hung on the wall of our shop for some years, finally 
disappearing when the other technician retired.

The technician who was sent out spent nearly two days completely repinning 
the action, and then doing a full regulation/etc.

The point is that virtually no one really gave those actions a truly fair 
trial.  The factory was impossible, technicians were recalcitrant, dealers 
did not want to pay to fix what was clearly manufacturing problems, and, as 
was pointed out, the early service bulletins (when they finally appeared) 
were, to put it charitably, poorly done and not well supported.

I suppose this sounds like a rant.  That is not how it is intended.  There 
is always more to any given situation than meets the eye.  In this case, 
the company has never chosen to deal realistically with the fallout from 
that initial period; and, during that period left a number of technicians 
really hanging out to dry.  It wasn't very pretty.

The worst part of the whole fiasco is that the relative failure of the 
early teflon bushing, coupled with the equally disastrous early use of 
plastics (mostly in lower-end instruments) combined to create a milieu in 
which it has become so difficult to gain acceptance for any new designs 
and/or materials.  Given the paucity of decent hardwoods, the idea that we 
are still wasting that irreplaceable resource in preference to something 
else for action parts is absurd.

OK - the last part is a rant...sorry.

Best.

Horace