one of those days

[Conrad Hoffsommer]

Wayne Walker wrote:
> Just came from a customer with a pre 1900 Morris upright. Pianos needs 
> tuning and few notes not working, lady of the house tells me. I open the 
> piano and first thing I noticed is the big long crack in the open face 
> pin block. This crack cover most of the upper pins in the tenor section. 
> There were more short cracks thru out the block. The crack was wide 
> enough that I could get the blade of my jack knife in about 1/4 of an 
> inch. Piano had missing hammers etc..
> I called the lady back into the room to show her the pin block and told 
> her the piano was not worth fixing. She understood, I thought until, she 
> asked me if I had fix the keys that were not working. I said no I didn't 
> because the piano was north fixing..She said that they needed to be fix 
> as her children were taking lesson on the piano. I explained this was 
> not a good piano for kids to take lesson as it was a tone down in pitch 
> etc... "Well this is what we got and we don't want to spent more in 
> cased the kids lose interest. " was her comment. "By the way you talked 
> you don't want to work on my piano, so you should leave" I knew I was 
> fighting a losing battle so I left. Makes you wondering.
>  

Someone on this list earlier gave the analogy of learning to ride on a 
bicycle with flat tires and inflating them after they learn.

My response to a similar situation many years ago was to wish them 
always the level of service they are willing to pay for. (that party 
didn't even want to pay the service call...)

-
Conrad Hoffsommer - Keyboard Technician
Luther College, 700 College Dr., Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045
1-(563)-387-1204 // Fax 1-(563)-387-1076

- Right now, I'm hoping to live until my age matches my golf score,
- Until then, I'll have to be content to have my IQ match my handicap.