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14
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Technical Department
(Continued from page 13)
those products or any information about them
from these same men.
"Could I Prevail—"
If every manufacturer in the trade who
has a player action, a piano action, a grand
piano with any interesting feature, a new piano
tool or a new accessory idea of any kind to
market, might be prevailed upon to take a room
at the Statler Hotel at Detroit during the first
week of August and send an expert there to
spend his time for four days showing the hun-
dreds of technical men who will be present all
about his product, its merits, the way of oper-
ating it, the construction of it and how to use
or maintain it, it should certainly be done.
For it is my deliberate opinion that there is not
one single other matter of half so much im-
portance as this is to the maintenance and
improvement, so much needed, of the service
end of the piano industry.
It is doubtless realized by most men in our
industry who think for themselves that no more
pressing and difficult problem exists than that
of organizing service. Since the advent of the
player-piano the tuner in the field has been
obliged to acquire a large additional quantum of
technical knowledge, and has had to do this
moreover in face of very great difficulties.
Most tuners have had to "pick up" their knowl-
edge in the best way they could, for the best
efforts of the manufacturers have not been suf-
ficient as yet to bring technical instruction di-
rectly to anything like even a majority of the
tuners of the country. The advent of the repro-
ducing piano, furthermore, has merely compli-
cated an already difficult problem.
Now the annual convention of the tuners' as-
sociation brings together tuners from all over
the country. To-day virtually every tuner of
any pretense at authority knows fundamentally
enough about player mechanism to do a fair
job of regulation or maintenance on an ordi-
nary player-piano. Grand player actions, how-
ever, are still mysterious to many of these men
and reproducing pianos are much more so, of
course. The great manufacturers of reproduc-
ing actions have for several years now been do-
ing their best to bring the tuners into direct
contact with much-needed technical instruction
by the device of the traveling school; nor is
there any doubt that they have forged an ex-
tremely efficient weapon to the desired end.
At the forthcoming convention of the Tuners'
Association these traveling schools will be well
represented, and rightly so, because their con-
ductors understand that during the four days
of the convention they will have the best of op-
portunity to give intensive instruction to the
visitors. It is the example of these instructors
which I recommend to every manufacturer who
has anything of technical interest to show.
Exhibits an Integral Part of Convention
The tuners' convention lasts four days and
special rules have been adopted by the Associa-
tion for the purpose of rendering more effective
the work of exhibitors during those days. Cer-
tain hours will be set off for their sole use, and
the business of the convention will be carried
on during certain other hours set apart for that
purpose. Outside the hours of business meet-
ings, every moment of each day will be set
apart for attendance upon the exhibits, which
are all to be grouped together in the sample
rooms on one floor of the Hotel Statler. In
consequence there should be no difficulty in or-
ganizing classes for instruction at each and all
of the player and reproducing piano exhibits;
and no doubt the various exhibitors will arrange
among themselves to divide the available time
so that each class shall have ample opportunity
to do its work and every visitor equal oppor-
tunity to join and attend any or all of the
classes.
Those who have already reserved space in-
clude several who will not need to offer definite
long-continued class instruction, but whose
product on the other hand may be displayed
to the visitors in the certainty that casual and
brief explanations of its merits will be sufficient.
To all such, and to all others who may consider
the question of exhibiting, I should like to make
certain suggestions based upon my own experi-
ence as a visitor to the exhibits at every meet-
ing of the tuners since exhibits first began; sug-
gestions which of course represent nothing but
my personal oponion, but which are not on that
account necessarily without value.
Suggestions for Prospective Exhibitors
In the first place, then, it ought to be under-
stood that the practice of the Association, whose
annual meeting we are discussing, is to regard
the exhibits as an integral part of the conven-
tion. To this end the Association co-operates
with the prospective exhibitors, and this year
has gone so far as to reserve fifty special sam-
ple rooms in the convention hotel for exhibition
use, itself, through an official designated for
the purpose, making the reservations with the
exhibitors, quoting rates and doing everything
in its power to see that each display is housed
in a room suited to it, neither too large nor too
small. Exhibitors who will propose to hold
classes of instructions, as, for instance, the mak-
ers of reproducing piano actions, will naturally
take larger rooms. Those who have only tools
or accessories to show will be able to get along
well with much less space and so on. A. V.
Minifie, 34 Edison street, Pontiac, Mich., is the
official who represents the Association in this
matter for the Detroit convention.
In the second place, on account of the ar-
rangements whereby the Association takes con-
trol of the exhibition space, the rates will be
much lower than they have ever been before.
They will probably be almost the same as reg-
ular sample-room rates.
In the third place, it will be highly desirable
for each and every exhibitor to realize that
whatever he may have to show will be under
the inspection of technical men, capable of criti-
cizing from a technical point of view the things
shown, and desiring above all to understand the
inside construction of everything. Therefore,
MARCH 28,
if a player-piano is in question its maker should
take special care to exhibit the player action in
sectional form, and also to have parts in the
rough taken from the factory before their as-
sembling in order that everything of the in-
ternal construction may be readily laid bare.
No point is more important than this. The
visitors will not be interested in the outside
finish very much, and only secondarily in the
question of price. What they will want to know
is how well or how ill the thing is constructed.
They will come with questions in their mouths,
to which they will desire to have frank and
truthful replies. Each of those visitors will
come into a display room feeling that some day
he will have to tune or repair or use the thing
he is going to look at; and naturally he will
want to know all about its construction. His
whole attitude will be determined by the facts
of his position in the industry as a service man;
and the whole attitude of the exhibitor towards
him should be guided accordingly.
In the fourth place, it is highly desirable that
there should be some exhibits of a technical
nature illustrating the construction of grand
pianos, and especially the regulation of grand
piano actions. Last year Mr. Werolin and his
associates in the service department of the
American Piano Company found so many re-
quests coming in for information about the ac-
tions of the grand pianos they were using as
part of their Ampico instruction that before
they knew what they were about they found
themselves giving lessons in grand action reg-
ulating. Now, this year that work ought to be
put upon something like a systematic basis.
Correspondence
is solicited and should be addressed to William
Braid White, c/o The Music Trade Review,
Western Division, 209 South State street, Chi-
cago.
Consult the Universal Want Directory of
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.
Our New
Tuners* Case No. 150
Light, Compact and Serviceable
which
When closed the aluminum trays nest together over the large compartment,
13H'X6'X4*.
The two left hand trays measure 15H"*2J4 S xltf* and the
two right hand trayt 13H"*3H"xlH"'.
The partition* in right hand trayi are
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leather aad fitted with very secure lock and highly nickel-pUted hardware trimmings.
x
Outside Dimensions: 15*4" long, 7" wide, 8" high. Weight: 6 /a pounds.
$13.00 each, F.O.B. New York.
HAMMACHER, SCHLEMMER & CO.
I
Piano and Player Hardware, Felts and Tools
New York—Since 1846
1925
4th Ave. and 13th St.