Les wrote... >accurately match the warranty to the design and quality of the >piano. In others words, a piano that carries a warranty of five >years, is designed to last five years and one day. A piano with >a ten years warranty, designed to last ten years and one day. It's And a piano with a "lifetime" warranty (on the SB)? B-}) >one of the miracles of modern piano technology! So when you ask >how long the crown on soundboard should last, it's all relative-- >to the length of the warranty. No more of this nonsense about a It's all relative, but the length of the warranty doesn't relate. If it did, those pianos with "lifetime warranties" would mean they're the best. Manufacturers go to great pains to ensure their solid-spruce soundboards will "last", but you're dealing with WOOD here. A maker can put all the effort they can into building a board properly, only to have the owner neglect it or torture it somehow. >piano being so over-engineered and over-built that it will out- >last the warranty by a century, or so. Modern technology has cor- >rected THAT MISTAKE, alright! It's my opinion that pianomakers in general suffered from their pianos being over-built. If you build a piano to last a lifetime that's one less new piano you'll sell in the forseeable future. The Singer sewing machine people ran into a similar situation long ago. Their machines were so well built that people weren't buying new ones. They offered large trade-in credits to their customers and broke the trades up into junk to protect the market. The direction I can see the "average" piano going is there will be more recyclable parts (plastics and metals) and when the warranty is up the pianos will be broken up for their content just like the Singers. Better than than having to fix them. John Musselwhite, RPT Calgary, Alberta Canada musselj@cadvision.com
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