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MAY
THE
31, 1924
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
11
TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT
Conducted By William Braid White
The Part Which the Tuner Could Play
in Developing a Technical Association
Experience and Knowledge Gained in Actual Contact With Pianos, Player-Pianos and Repro-
ducing Pianos in the Homes of Their Owners an Invaluable Asset to the Technical
Side of the Industry, of Which Little Use Is Made To-day
T
UNERS and field technicians generally
will listen with sympathy to the proposals
emanating from a distinguished factory
superintendent for the formation of a national
technical society. They will hope that if and
when any such society is organized their knowl-
edge, their experience and their enthusiasm will
not be ignored, but that they will be asked to
contribute what they can to the stores of those
qualities which will be needed if the organiza-
tion is successfully to be effected and main-
tained.
Tuners and field technicians generally feel quite
justly that their experience and their knowledge
should be called upon much more frequently
than they are by those who profess to be anx-
ious about the quality of pianos and of player-
pianos and who say that they desire to know all
that can be known about the behavior of these
instruments under the stress of domestic and
professional use. It is because tuners have rea-
son to feel somewhat skeptical of the protesta-
tion of benevolent interest in their affairs in
which trade leaders sometimes indulge that they
are often inclined to maintain a detached atti-
tude in all these matters and to prefer to wait
and see before they signify their adhesion to
any suggested new technical departure.
It is, of course, highly unfortunate that the
factory men and the tuner should thus be unable
to see eye to eye. For among the many bene-
fits which the tuners have it in their power to
Under New Management
Piano Key Repairing
GRAINED IVORINE. Per Set Keys. . . $8.00
CELLULOID. Per Set Keys
7.00
COMPOSITION, Per Set Keys
10.00
All Work and Deliveries by Parcels Post in
Two Weeks Guaranteed
HARLEM PIANO & ORGAN KEY CO.
.lohn C. Vonderlippe, Proprietor
882 River Road
Edgewater, N. J.
Telephone Cliffside 879-M
Send for This Valuable
Free Book
One of the lureit ways to Increase
rour profit! It to repair mar? and
tcratrhet Immediately. If your prospec-
tive customer tee* a defect In the finish
your rhiinre of making a talc ii greatly
diminish rd
"How to Repair Damage to Var-
nished Surfaces" tells how vou can In-
atanilr repair
any Injury to the finish
of mualral ; nstruments or fine furniture.
It will Interest any dealer, tuner or
repair man
WRITE FOR FREE COPY TODAY
If you are too busy to write a letter, pin
this ad to vour card or letterhead and mall
It to in. We'll know what you warn
The M. L. Campbell Company
2328 Penn
Kantai City. Mo.
FAUST SCHOOL
OF TUNING
Standard of America
Alumni of 2000
Piano Tuning, Pipe and Reed Organ
and Player Piano. Year Book Free.
27-29 Gainsboro Street
BOSTON, MASS.
bestow upon an industry which has not in gen-
eral treated them with any excess of generosity
is the vast benefit of their accumulated expe-
rience as to the behavior of materials and de-
signs under use. In any discussion of the tech-
nical needs of the piano industry in its various
branches, or in any proposal for the organiza-
tion of research, no single point is more im-
portant than this; that the tuners have within
them the power of rendering any such move-
ment as fruitful by their co-operation as they
certainly can render it nugatory by their ab-
stention.
Old Days Gone for Good
As the prejudices and the bigotries of past
days begin to vanish, as the old conceptions
are replaced under the pressure of economic and
social events, by principles and convictions
newer and more nearly in accord with facts, the
tuners find themselves in the eyes of the indus-
try assuming their proper station. It is no
longer necessary for the highly educated field
technician to feel that he is an underling, treated
with no more respect than is given to the porter.
If he anywhere continues thus to be treated, he
has himself to blame; and if he continues to hold
himself at the disposal of a house so far behind
the times, the blame is to be imputed to him
doubly.
New times are indeed at hand. I shall not
now attempt to discuss the bearing of their
arrival upon the economic status of the field
technician. I shall rather dwell for the purposes
of this article upon the technical position which
is now waiting for him if he will but stretch
forth his hand to take it. I shall, in a word,
speak of the place which is to be occupied by
the tuner in the organization of research and
in the technical development which the next
few years are bound to bring forth.
Subject Will Not Down
Whatever may at this time happen to the pro-
posal which Mr. Gutsohn has set before the
trade for the formation of a national society of
technical men, "there is not the slightest doubt
that the matter is in the air. Nothing may be
done at the present time. The whole affair may
temporarily be shelved; but it is as certain as
the sun of to-morrow that it will be heard of
again and again, and that it will never be sup-
pressed. The economic and social events which
are producing on all sides industrial revolutions
are not leaving on one side the piano industry.
The need for scientific research and for the bet-
ter organization of technical knowledge is not
less insistent because a great many of our lead-
ing men do not recognize it. On the contrary,
it is very insistent, and every factory superin-
tendent knows that it is. Every superintendent,
every production man, every one who has any
reason to care for the quality of piano and
player-piano construction knows very well that
if we had in the industry to-day an organiza-
tion to which technical problems might be re-
Established 1901
POLK TUNING SCHOOL
Pioneer school of piano, player-piano and Reproducing
Piano tuning and repairing in the United Statea.
Complete Courses Tanght la Seven to Taa Weeks
Write for terms and literature
POLK BTJILDIHG
VALPARAISO, IICD.
ferred with some certainly of their being solved
we should all be more prosperous and more
confident. Every superintendent knows that the
personnel question in the factories throughout
our industry is an extremely important, nay
vital, question, and at the lame time that it is
one which cannot safely be neglected much
longer. The labor turnover in our piano and
player factories is already large enough to be
scandalous; and to ignore it is to invite disaster.
So much every factory man knows.
Moreover, every factory man knows that the
question of questions in relation to any kind of
improvement is the question cf crgi;ni;:in^
knowledge concerning the behavior of the piano
and the player-piano under use. A vast amount
of unorganized knowledge on this subject is, of
course, in existence; but a great deal more than
its mere existence is needed. Here especially
the aid of the outside men is called for and here
especially their interests lie.
Tuners Must Take Position
What are the tuners going to do in this situa-
tion? Here we have a few bright men, keen
minds, acute thinkers, trying to get the inert
mass of the industry waked up to realize the
need of organizing its technical knowledge and
putting it to fruitful .use. These men already are
wondering what attitude towards their en-
deavors the body of the tuners will take, for
they thoroughly perceive that they cannot do
without these tuners. What response then are
they going to obtain?
Tt is a time for us all to rise above ourselves
and to think in terms and on principles consid-
erably higher than we commonly permit to gov-
ern us. Tuners have many genuine grievances
against the trade. They can justly say that they
have been badly treated, that their advice has
been rejected, that they have been ridiculed as
eccentric troublemakers, quite unfit to discuss
practical questions and quite unable to under-
stand the economics of piano building. They
feel . . . or many of them do at least . . .
that if the trade is going to get itself into diffi-
culties because it has been and continues to be
technically blind, no one will be to blame save
the trade itself; and they cynically ask whether
any efforts they might make to help in the work
of reform would be likely to have any better
reception in 1924 than they would have had in
1894.
I, at least, cannot pretend to sneer at these
views, for I recognize only too plainly their jus-
tice. Vet I appeal to the better thought of
every field technician who can think for him-
self, and I say to each such man that to-day the
difference is that big thinkers, men of influence,
are really beginning to see the truth and are
recognizing that the tuner is not merely an
essential part of the trade, but its only inde-
pendent unbiased technical authority. Twenty
or even ten years ago the tuner was universally
regarded as nothing much more than a nuisance.
To-day he is acknowledged to be quite as im-
portant as the salesman. If and when he finds
himself still under the old cloud of suspicion
and ridicule, it may usually be taken for granted
that purely personal reasons govern the situa-
tion and that he has himself to thank for his
disadvantageous situation. It is evident that the
tuner may now rise above his once quite justifi-
(Continued on page 12)
TUNERS
Here are
BASS STRINGS
•peelal atUatlaa ahrna to tae mmt» ef the taaar a*4 ta< faaler
OTTO R. TREFZ,
Jr.
Philadelphia. Pa.
2110 Fairmount Avenue