<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: When it's probably shot</title></head><body> <div>At 12:01 PM -0500 8/18/02, Alan R. Barnard wrote:</div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" size="-1"> a fictional overdamper sitting in an unheated/uncooled garage in New Orleans for 40 years. I might, in such a case, tell the caller that I would charge a service call fee if we didn't end up tuning/repairing it. I actually had a customer who had stored a piano in New Orleans as I described but it was an old Gulbransen spinet. ALL of the flanges and whippen elbows were made of that old plastic that crumbles to dust. Oddly, because it was "Mom's Piano" they paid me to replace all the flanges and elbows and I now tune it every six months--even though the piano certainly did not have enough resale value to justify the expense.</font></blockquote> <div><br></div> <div><br></div> <div>Now why does everyone pick on New Orleans when they want a picture of neglect and decay? I have seen a piano stored in a shed in Jamaica Plain (frozen then overheated) that was in much worse shape than any I've seen in the South, barring the sad case of the rosewood S&S square that had been kept on a patio under a tarp for the two years since Mama passed. It about broke my heart........</div> </body> </html>