Shut my mouth

[Farrell]

I have run into this type of situation many times. My guidelines are if you
are being paid to evaluate the piano, be very blunt, direct, thorough and
honest. If you are there to tune the piano and they simply ask "isn't this a
wonderful piano - listen to that tone (thud)!" desperately search for one
positive thing to say about the piano, like "golly, that's really
something - you sure don't hear many like that (thank goodness)!",  or "wow,
your key ends are really.....square (mayber a few will be)". And leave it at
that.

The sticky part comes when the owner of the junker tells you that "yes, my
grandmother learned how to play piano on this little baby, my mother learned
how to play, and I learned how to play on it. I am so gland that now my
daughter is about to start taking lessons and playing on little betsy
(ross?) (hammers: motheaten rocks, action: meggasloppy, keys: majorwiggley,
strings: long dead, pins: loose, etc., etc., etc.) Obviously a very SCARY
situation. The kid is guaranteed to dislike such a poor piano and will
likely fail at playing.

I usually tell the owner something like the following. "It is important for
the child to play a piano that can be tuned properly, and has a
good-feeling, responsive action. And, yes, your piano was a very good
quality piano when first manufactured, but now it suffers from much wear and
aging - which is common to any piano that has been played for many decades.
There are a number of improvements that we could make to the performance of
your piano. (List them.) Doing the minumum would likely cost approximately
$2,000 (or whatever). To really make it like new would cost $12,000 (or
more?). There are very nice 10 to 20 year old used pianos available for
under $1,000 - or consider a new paino".

And leave it at that.

Terry Farrell
Piano Tuning & Service
Tampa, Florida
mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "pryan2" <pryan2@the-beach.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 7:56 AM
Subject: Shut my mouth


> I had two customers today with newly acquired old, used pianos acquired in
> the last six months.  (One was a grand salvaged from a fire and painted
> white and thrown back together and the other a 45 year old "Naga"
Wurlitzer
> spinet)  Both customers asked me what I thought of their piano.  When I
> started to tell them diplomatically  that the hammers were as hard as
rocks,
> the strings were dead and rusty, the actions were loose and noisy, the
> tuning pins were either frozen or loose, they both stopped me and
exbounded
> on the virtues of their pianos and how wonderful they would be for the
kids
> to learn on etc.  I took their cue, shut up, nodded my head, collected my
> fee and left.
>
> Question:  How honest should we be when asked to evaluate an old piano?  I
> just feel that we are not doing them a service to agree with their
misguided
> logic.  On the other hand, they really don't want to know the bad parts
and
> I don't want to lose a customer.  Where is the middle road?
>
> Phil Ryan
> Miami Beach
>
>
>