Once again, I agree with you William. It is not difficult to tighten
beckets from tapping the coils from the tops, bringing them tight together
at the bottom and lining them up. It is not difficult to shove the beckets
in BEFORE you tighten up the strings so they are not kinked or rounded.
Like everything, it takes time to learn it but once learned becomes a habit
and is easy.
There is no reason why looks, quality and everything else cannot always go
together other than perhaps a lack of proper planning. If the job is
forcing one to get it completed to quickly, you're doing something wrong in
my opinion. Not allowing enough time to complete the work or something
else. Perhaps it is time to no longer accept those jobs or work strictly on
that one piano only until the job is completed. It'll be completed quicker.
On the PTG exam's, looks counts too. Too much glue, to little. Hammers
lined up? Hammers the right height in relation to the others around it?
Proper size key bushings used? Proper height and depth of felt? To much or
to little glue used? To many coils around the tuning pins? Not enough?
Splicing done correctly? Extra wire not touching nearby strings? Etc..
Actually, the workmanship that I've seen where the beckets are not lined up,
coils not tight, tuning pins not level etc., also become a sign that hammers
are not properly lined up, spaced, mated or voiced and neither is regulation
always done as it should be. Like I said before, it's a cop out in my
opinion.
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of William Monroe
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 8:16 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Tuning pin height
Come on Israel (and others),
Can we stop looking for a rationale to leave beckets wherever? This is a
stretch. The "repetitive motion" happens regardless of becket placement.
Can't we just accept that it's a cosmetic detail and some of us like to have
that cosmetic detail in place, take some pride in it even? We've done away
with the myth that it HAS to be more work and now it is simply a matter that
you either choose to line them up or don't. Stop trying to justify not
doing it with anything other than a simple, "I don't prefer attend to that."
This search for a justification is really unproductive.
William R. Monroe
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Israel Stein <custos3 at comcast.net> wrote:
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
--
William R. Monroe, RPT
A440-William R. Monroe Piano Services, Inc.
314 E. Church St.
Belleville, WI 53508
608-215-3250
www.a440piano.net
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