<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)"><style></style></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1>Well, I repin actions and even rebush keys without doing a total rebuild.   Gosh, the other day I even filed a set of hammers without replacing them! <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Gee, had I known this is where it would all lead maybe I’d have thought twice about posting it.  Things like this are inevitable.  The state of the art rancher that I grew up in got bulldozed a few years back when it sold basically for the land (too bad we moved too soon!).   Economies of scale will always produce at lesser cost than individuals.  History is replete with examples of manufacturing moving around.  I don’t hear anybody complaining about that cheap computer they are typing away on.  Maybe you’d rather have an old IBM dos computer from 1980 made in the good ol’ USA.  I think they cost about $6000 back then, had a very small fraction of the capacity and speed.  What would those computers cost with the rate of inflation now?    <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>There will always be a market for custom rebuilds of quality pianos.  I haven’t had a down day even during this last recession (knock on wood).  But unless you are willing to sell your services for minimum wage you just can’t compete (nor should you) with modern manufacturing in terms of production costs versus rebuilding pianos of negligible value.  I don’t think it’s any great conspiracy.  <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>I’m not sure that the young generation is not interested in becoming piano tuners any less than our generation when I/we were younger.  It’s always been a somewhat specialized market.  When I want a plumber, electrician, cabinet maker, carpenter… I have plenty to choose from and they all seem to charge a living wage.  I have a hard time seeing the connection between the future of our trade and the global oil market or “big Pharma”.  <o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p>Anyway, I saw this very nice small Young Chang grand piano in Seattle.  Lots of custom design features, quality parts, well made (from what I could tell).  Under 5’ and sounded very nice and hadn’t benefitted yet from any preparation.  I don’t know what the MSRP was but I’ll bet it was quite reasonable.  So try and talk your average Ms Johnson  who wants her 6 year-old to start taking piano lessons into rebuilding her Apollo Grand which is coming apart even at Midwestern prices, and then show her what she could have for a fraction of that cost and see what she says.   Or maybe you could just repin the action, rebush the keys, rub on a little Howard’s Finish Restore and call it a day.  She won’t know—or will she?<o:p></o:p><o:p> </o:p><div>David Love<o:p></o:p>www.davidlovepianos.com<o:p></o:p></div><o:p> </o:p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'>From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 2:29 PM To: pianotech@ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] NY Times article on pianos<o:p></o:p></div></div><o:p> </o:p>What I see is one more way in which this country has paid for letting Wall Street put most of the young and educated into indentured servitude via student loans. The young generation cannot afford to become ordinary everyday piano tuners, so the work is going undone. Even if people wanted to get standard piano maintenance, they could hardly find anyone to do it for an affordable sum. So here we have a population fighting unemployment with scant success, but at the same time it's nearly impossible to find people like repairmen, affordable plumbers, doctors who will take the time to practice medicine instead of pushing drugs for Big Pharma, or anyone who will do jobs like repinning an action or even rebushing keys, without doing a total rebuild and charging "California prices." (Sorry, David, I know that's just how it is, living there.) It's the same thing which affects all manufactured goods. Anything solid and long-lasting stopped being made because the people owning production could skim more by using sweat labor and turning out non-durable imports, which purposefully cannot be repaired. If people will step back and take a longer view, they might notice that Peak Oil and Global Warming are neither of them myths, and the party is nearly over. Check the price of corn this week. The national credit card has been maxed out for years, and only the desire to postpone collapse has caused the Chinese to grant us loans we can never repay, to buy more of their stuff which they should keep for themselves. The political cartoons this week are talking about driving toward "fiscal collapse". Does anyone think that people will go on buying cheap keyboards and imported grands after the Euro zone implodes (now in progress) and food stocks worldwide go from thin to empty from repeated droughts? The ability to repair things has not been the flavor of the month (or the year or several decades) but I think its time will come again. In the meantime, we should triage the pianos before they head to the dump, try to find homes for the better abandoned ones, make playable the medium-tired but good, and sadly let the rest go. Anything which we can do to slow down the trashing of pianos, some perfectly good, we should do. I doubt that in twenty years building cheap grands in Indonesia and shipping them here and to Europe will still be a viable business. And maybe by then we'll start making and doing things for ourselves again. Susan Kline <o:p></o:p></div></body></html>