From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:26:01 -0500 > > Israel Stein wrote: > >> And when rebuilding pianos in an institutional setting on salary one >> must always engage in triage, due to constraints on time and >> resources, pay attention to things that affect function and >> sometimes forget about one's "pride". > It's a bit different for an independent. We don't have time to waste > either, as the pay is tied to the job rather than the calendar. Still, > there are too many times when we spend much longer doing a fixed pay > job than we intended, just because we aren't satisfied with the > outcome. Each job that goes out represents us to entirely different > people in totally uncontrolled ways. > Ron, Yes, I am aware of that. I work both sides of the fence - I am only half-time at the University and have only been there for about the last 5 years of my career. What bothers me about all this is there IS that time pressure on the private practitioner - from the client who wants his/her instrument back and from the need to pay the mortgage at some point. And guess what one is working on when that time pressure comes - voicing and regulation. And so more often than not I see all the fussing has been done early in the process - when the cosmetic stuff is being done - and the latter, functionally critical stuff gets shorted. It's really easy to talk yourself into believing that the piano plays and sounds fine (especially when the regulating is done by formula and not on the basis of function - but that's an entirely different discussion). Not that I am complaining - I have made plenty money re-regulating and revoicing some of those "purty" pianos over the years. It's just not good for the profession when people find out that those very expensive nice-looking "fully rebuilt" pianos aren't what they are cracked up to be... I just hate it when people generalize about workmanship on the basis of insignificant cosmetic details. Israel Stein
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