PRESTO
Presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT -
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, 94.
Payable In advance. No extra charge In United States
possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the
same day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, five p. m., to insure preferred position. Full
page display copy should be in hand by Monday noon
preceding publication day. Want advs. for current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1925.
PAINTED PIANOS
Perhaps the piano does need something to
stimulate the demand for it. It was always
so. There was never a time when the piano
manufacturers were not striving to do some-
thing a little different and to awaken a con-
stantly newer interest. And it is not different
in all other lines of industry and trade. It is
so all over the world. A good illustration,
and one that reflects creditably upon the
American piano, is to be seen in the recent
engagement of a piano expert widely known
on this side to cross over to France for the
purpose of creating new styles, and otherwise
Americanizing the pianos of Paris.
And at home the piano manufacturers are
as busy as ever in the creation of new ideas,
or reviving some of the bright ones in which
the older civilization excelled. Examples may
frequently be seen, as in the "painted pianos"
of the Starr Piano Company. Those beautiful
innovations present a departure from conven-
tional and mark a step forward along the line
of novelty. The combinations of color are
alone sufficient to challenge interest in the
mere printed word. We read : "Ivory and blue"
—enough to start the artistic vision of the
beautiful; ''French gray and mauve" ; "peacock
blue and ivory"; "peach blow and Chinese red."
The combinations are enough to cause a long-
ing to get somewhere and see something that
may fill the imagination awakened by the
thought of music enshrined in an object of
such beauty.
If the piano does need anything to stimulate
a demand, it must seem that the "painted"
Starr pianos are in line to supply it.
PIANO PRICES
A small town newspaper says that "pianos
that sold for $500 a few years ago now sell
for $199." The writer must have been study-
ing some local dealer's special clearance of
trade-ins and perhaps he might do even bet-
ter, or worse, than $199, for the second-hand
piano is no less a problem of business eco-
nomics in the average music store than is
the second-hand automobile in its line of trade.
As a matter of fact, piano prices have not
in many years been as stable, or so nearly
commensurate to the importance of the chief
instrument of music, as they are at the pres-
ent time. The world upheaval, which closed
seven years ago, served to readjust the figures.
It became no longer possible to produce pianos
at anything like the cost which had prevailed
in the earlier years of the new century. Cheap-
ness had taken precedence with many of the
piano industries, and the better class of in-
struments were being made to suffer by it.
Since the war, the cheaper class of industries
have felt the pressure, and many of them have
winked out, leaving the quality average vastly
better, and the prices proportionately im-
proved.
The piano business is not different from
others in the matter of trade-ins. The motor
car that has been used a year or more is a
greater problem to the automobile trade than
the used piano to the music store. For the
depreciation is proportionately much greater
with the car than with the piano. The "price"
of a new Lincoln car is not lowered because
trie trade-in is offered for half the original
cost, or less. Nor is the used flivver depreci-
ated because it was originally inexpensive,
but because it in time becomes beyond better-
ment. A piano may be put into such shape as
brings back its selling values to a much great-
er degree. Piano prices are better, and not
worse, than they were "a few years ago."
RADIO TUBES
There may have been some who doubted
the accuracy of Mr. T. M. Pletcher's state-
ment that the radio tube business alone would
exceed $25,000,000, or that twenty million
tubes are required to supply the demand, at
an average of $1.50 per. The statement looked
like a very large one to those who saw only
a small article in itself, of perhaps seemingly
no very great importance. But if the esti-
mates of experts in the East are correct, Mr.
Pletcher said it accurately, even if a little in
advance of the others.
The radio business has become a vast one.
It has been crystallizing into substantial re-
lations to human needs, until now it is no
longer in any sense an experiment. And, in-
asmuch as the tube is as absolutely essential
to the receiver as the bulb to the electric light,
the unparalleled growth of the radio is all that
is required with which to estimate the place
of the tube as an article of quick and steady
sale.
If twenty millions of tubes were sold dur-
ing this year, which has been in a sense a
period of development and stabilization in the
radio business, what will the figures show at
the close of 1926? No doubt the business will
increase, as it has been doing, and so far as
concerns the tube alone the increasing num-
ber of sets sold must add to the demand for
tubes. So that the supply business in radio
promises to be one of the outstanding features
in the trade of well equipped music stores.
The tubes, and other supplies complete in
themselves, will be carried in stock by music
dealers, whether they sell the larger things
of radio or not. It is impossible to see an ex-
aggeration in Mr. Pletcher's estimate from
any present point of view.
A music trade paper promises $500 for a
satisfactory—of course the impossible "best"
—solution of the trade-in problem. The New
November 28, 1925.
York Piano Dealers' Association tried to settle
it by preparing a schedule of prices, based
upon the instrument's age. With some people,
if the piano happens to be a very old one it
has double value as a relic or curiosity. The
real trade-in problem is settled by the individ-
ual dealer who has the offer of a sale in which
an exchange is involved.
* * * '
It is said that the return of the original
piano, played in the good old way, has awak-
ened activity for re-builders and expert mak-
ers-over of fine old instruments. The rebuild-
ing branch of the E. Leins Piano Co., in New
York, presents a fine illustration. The demand
upon Mr. Leins' skill was never before so
great.
* * *
It is significant of the increasing hold of
music upon the people that never before were
there anything like the number of school
bands being organized. The band instrument
industries are feeling the effects of this special
awakening and, of course, it reflects favorably
upon all other branches of the music business.
* * *
Writers in the big magazines are turning-
their attention to the commission plan of re-
muneration for active outside salesmen. In
some of the larger lines of selling, the com-
mission plan is equitable and attractive to
really capable workers. And the piano busi-
ness is one of them.
* * *
If every piano merchant who has cause for
giving thanks attended to his duty on Thurs-
day, only a comparatively few of them neg-
lected their devotional exercises. For business
is better.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(November 28, 1895.)
Joseph Jefferson begins a two weeks' engagement
at McVicker's Theater, Chicago, Monday, December
2, appearing each evening of the first week and Sat-
urday matinee in "Rip Van Winkle."
Few of the modern wonders of invention are so
closely allied to musical interests as the phonograph,
and the music writers should make themselves famil-
iar with its possibilities in this connection.
One of the recent evidences of the enterprise of
the Story & Clark Co. is the establishing of a branch
house in Cleveland. It is located in the arcade and
gives promise of being an important outlet for the
Chicago instruments.
Quantities of provisions will be stacked in the
store, 235 Wabash avenue, and on Thanksgiving
morning J. V. Steger, assisted by a force of twenty-
two clerks wilt deliver to each mother who falls into
line the materials necessary for a comforting dinner.
Turkey, chicken, beef and bread will pass with all
possible dispatch into the hands of these mothers,
until five thousand families shall be fed.
20 YEARS AQ0 THIS WEEK
(From Presto, November 30, 1905.)
The death of C S. Fischer takes away the oldest
piano man and removes one more of the old guard.
These are now exceedingly few and can be counted
almost on the fingers of one hand. Freeborn G.
Smith, Henry Lindeman, A. Holmstrom, and B.
Kroeger are men of a group fast thinning out.
Another addition to the Doll factory will be com-
menced at an early date. Jacob Doll & Sons have
acquired twenty-two building lots adjoining the fac-
tory at the corner of Southern boulevard and Cypress
avenue, New York, and preparations are already on
the way for enlarging the already big factory.
The trade papers that possess substance go right
along and are prospering-. The New York piano men
are believers in their trade papers. Every man in
the New York trade knows the trade papers from
editors to circulation liars. And they estimate the
relative value and usefulness of the various trade
editors at pretty nearly the correct notches.
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