Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
JULY 26, 1924
11
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Improving Automatic Service Work
Developing a Wider Knowledge of the Service Requirements of the Automatic Piano Among the Tuners and
Technicians a Necessity if the Demand for This Instrument Is to Advance in the Future—
The Technical Manual, Its Circulation and the Results Which It Brings
O apology is made for once more press-
ing upon the notice of the automatic
instrument trade the need for a better
organization of their service work. The state-
ment has been made before, but it needs to be
made again.
As a statement it gains additional point from
the near approach of the convention of the Na-
tional Association of Piano Tuners, the service
men of the industry, upon whose shoulders falls
the burden of sustaining pianos, player-pianos
and automatic players in the places of their use.
It is much to be hoped that every maker of
automatic players in any form will imitate the
example set last year, and repeated this year,
by some of the most eminent manufacturers of
pianos and player-pianos, and will undertake
technical displays of their mechanisms in
charge of men able to explain these to the serv-
ice men in such a way as to give the latter a
clear understanding of the simplicity, the effi-
ciency and the good construction of these in-
struments.
Ignorance, prejudice and consequent indiffer-
ence are the curse of all occupations, and in our
trade we find no exceptions to what is so nearly
universal a rule. Service men are no worse than
dealers and salesmen, so far as that goes, nor
are they much to be blamed if they are unable
to understand the need for acquiring a certain
new branch of knowledge unless at the same
time the advantage of the acquirement has been
put to them in a manner quite unmistakable.
For every tuner one finds announcing him-
self ready and glad to tackle any coin-operated
player-piano or movie theatre organ we find ten
who hesitate and back water at the mere sug-
gestion. We find, too, that as a general thing
tuners are shy of even touching instruments of
this class; and all this not because they do not
understand player mechanism fairly well, but
because they have acquired, through prejudice
and misinformation, a totally wrong idea of
what they are likely to encounter, and are afraid
to jeopardize their professional reputation by
working on something which they might not be
able to handle satisfactorily. That is the real
trouble with the service question in the auto-
matic trade.
The Time Solution
Now, there are various ways of getting out of
this annoying situation. If we leave matters to
take their course time will tell on our side and
we shall find everything come out all right . . .
in time. Tuners will be compelled, one by one,
to confront and handle coin-operated pianos,
and will find, to their surprise, no doubt, that
they are dealing with something on the whole
much simpler and easier to handle than the mod-
ern high-class player-piano, certainly simpler
than the reproducing piano. But to leave mat-
ters thus to be adjusted by the operation of time
alone is to leave matters in a state of maladjust-
ment for a good deal longer than most of us
would wish. We can hardly afford to spoil by
such neglect the chances of expanding our market.
If, then, we are to take time by the forelock
we shall have to figure on some way of getting
at as 1 many tuners as we can reach in the short-
est time and with the probability of the best
results. The suggestion made above as to dis-
playing the technical facts of the various coin-
operated and automatic players to the tuners at
their forthcoming Milwaukee convention will be
obvious to every reader; nor is there the slight-
est difficulty in doing this. The visitors will
undoubtedly be numbered by hundreds, and the
opportunity to deal with these selected experts
from all over the country is far too good to be
N
missed. The expense- will be trifling and the
results almost certainly out of all proportion to
the money cost.
How to Do It
Not to make a story too long, let us just say
further that displays made for the purposes out-
lined should include always skeleton models,
and parts unassembled, which can be used for
class teaching of groups. A complete instru-
ment in working order should be included and
the man in charge should be first of all a tech-
nical man. Some publicity given to the inten-
tion will also help immensely.
The "Manual" Way
Now, putting that aside, we come to the gen-
eral question of working with, and upon, the
service men of the country. The problem of
establishing and maintaining contact with this
body has of late engaged the attention of many
manufacturing houses in the music industries,
most of whom have discovered that, outside the
questions discussed above, nothing works bet-
ter than a well-prepared manual or technical
hand-book, written for the tuner, from his
standpoint and to meet his needs. This is not
quite so simple a matter, however, as at first
might seem, for it is extremely important that
the work should be prepared in the constant
remembrance that the point of view to be con-
sidered is that of the outside tuner, the field
service man who may have to deal with an in-
strument far away from the chance of any im-
mediate consultation with an expert. There-
fore, it is important that, after the factory men
have set forth their ideas, the book should be
submitted to some tuner capable of judging it
from the point of view mentioned. It is a safe
bet that nine times in ten this critic will dis-
cover much that he will want to see altered,
since experts in the factory inevitably fall into
the error of supposing that everybody knows at
least something about their instrument. Nearly
always the expert talks over his readers' heads.
It is the same in all branches of science or tech-
nology. A famous astronomer and popular lec-
turer on astronomy told the present writer
some time ago that his greatest difficulty for
years was to remember that the audiences to
which he was lecturing must never be expected
to know anything at all about the subject. That
is always the expert's trouble. If he will only
figure that, although there will be some who do
know, there will be as many who do not, he will
speak or write as if for the ignorant only, "and
then he will be sure of satisfying everybody;
for the really expert will not need him and
those who are not really expert can always
profit by a little elementary teaching. As for
those who actually are blankly ignorant, only a
beginning from the A B C will ever help them.
Circulating It
To circulate such a book among the tuners is
equally a matter of importance. One very good
thing to do is to see that every merchant selling
the instruments gets at least one copy, with a
letter requesting him to hand it to his repair-
man and see that the latter reads it. A further
{Continued on page 12)
Downright Values
Have Made Us
Many Friends!
It has been dollar-for-dollar value manufactured into a
durable and artistic product that has caused the rapid rise
in favor of the
automatic instru-
ments manufac-
tured by the
NELSON-
WIGGEN
PIANO CO.
Style 2 Fian-O-Grand
With Pipe Attachment
1731-45 Belmont Ave.
CHICAGO, ILL.