P R E S T 0-T I M E S
December, 19,30
A LINE OF SATISFACTORY AND SALABLE NEW MODELS
Four Up=to=Date Mathushek Piano Styles Are Pictured Here
FLORKXTIXK
i;k.\.\I
THK
The four styles of Mathushek pianos shown here-
with constitute a group of leaders that are a fine line
for a dealer to equip himself with for ready sales.
These pictures were all used in the November issue
of Presto-Times in a full-page advertisement, and are
reproduced here in order to again call the attention
of dealers to the chance for profitable trading by
handling these instruments.
AAIOl'S COLIBUI
TII ', FT. 2 IX.)
XVI.
The four different styles shown in this group are,
each, intended to satisfy the particular needs of dif-
ferent customers, while, at the same time, any one of
them would please an artist.
Mathushek pianos, "known for tone," are sold on
present-day merits and not on past reputation alone,
because the company has always been loyal to its
customers and this loyalty has idealized and produced
OPEN^FORUM
TRADE NEEDS MORE OPTIMISM
Minot. N. Dak.. Nov. 30, 1930.
Kditor Presto-Times,
Dear Sir:
While I need to live and have profits for "bread,
butter and molasses," my chief aim has been that of
serving a worthy art and I believe that in the sale of
a thousand pianos I have done much along that line.
While I cannot point to any great musical artists 1
have been the means of helping to start, I know oi
many who have positions in music schools and on
the road whose first lessons were on pianos I sold.
I believe that the piano trade, which should be the
foundation of musical education, is suffering from a
serious case of "pessimism," caused by the fact that
many installment accounts are in arrears and many
manufacturers who should "take the bull by the tail
and look him square in the face" are shortening up
on the three things which made them what they
are—liberal credit to the ultimate users, help to the
salesmen, without whom they might just as well
close up, as many are doing, and advertising, the last
of which shows conclusively who are doing business
by the way they patronize "The Presto-Times," and
I can pick out piano concerns who used to be "Rarin'
to go," now staging a "fade out," which I attribute
to those three systems of "economy." Advertising i'
just as essential as sufficient oil to an automobile, am:
what they need is "Dr. Optimism" to minister to the
sick industry by going into their medicine cabinets
and taking out the remedies that used to be so effec-
tive, and applying them to present-day conditions.
They may find the bottles covered with dust, but
they worked before and will now. Your valuable
magazine can do much to help, and more, if it could
be more liberally patronized, and get more into the
hands of prospective purchasers and users.
Yours very truly,
D. ERNEST HALL.
FOR THOSE WHO STICK
Lawrence, Kan.. Dec. 8, 19.~().
Editor Presto-Times,
Dear Sir:
Well, while it may have been a tough year, as main-
say, it was possible for us to stay by the ship.
The writer"s strong hope is to see a piano with the
new patented achievements in inside construction he
has at his shop appear on the market.
Several manufacturers have taken the trouble to
write to me about it, but appear to be slow in making
the venture.
A. WERER.
A VETERAN TUNER'S LETTER
Cudjo's Bunkhouse, Calif.,
December 5. 1930.
Editor Presto Times.
Dear Sir:
1 was much interested in reading the article on "Re-
sents Libeling the Piano," accompanied by the letters
of C. Albert Jacob, Jr., and John J. Glynn of New
York, which appeared in Presto-Times some time
ago. My home, Cudjo's Bunkhouse, is not a town
and is not on the map, being a retreat in a high gorge
of the Sierras, on a tract of land I purchased a few
years ago for $5 an acre. But I have tuned pianos
for years in New York city and I know the condi-
tions of housing in that congested metropolis, all the
way from Williams Bridge on the north to Prospect
Park in Brooklyn; so you see it is not easy to misin-
form me about crowded hallways, or what becomes of
old pianos, for I am out of New York only nine
months.
The inspectors of the tenement house department of
New York city's government have found might}' few
pianos, Pll venture to say, that are cluttering up hall-
ways or out on the fire escapes. That kind of read-
ing will do for people residing in such roomy cities as
Chicago or Los Angeles. Middle Western and West-
ern people know nothing about the crowded way the
average poor (or a little above the poor) family lives
in New York city. It is impossible to leave a piano
in one of their narrow hallways—you'd have to climb
over it. It is impossible to set one of its smallest
pianos on a fire-escape, because the fire-escapes are
too diminutive. The only way another family could
move in after the occupant has moved out, is to take
the piano away from the premises entirely.
Understand, I am not roasting New York, for there
are millions of roomy homes there—I am only show-
ing the impossibility of the conditions complained of.
In the older and more central parts of New York the
buildings are closely wedged together and the people
swarm together into them—packed in like bees in a
hive.
They have not the faintest conception of
room, the vastness of space such as surrounds me
here on my mountain top, with the rush of God's fresh
air through the one window of my shack. My nearest
neighbor is three miles down the gorge, and he is
home only about once a month, being a herder of
goats.
At this distance in my new-found freedom, New-
York's great East Side, its great West Side and its
great Brooklyn, seem to me to be a gallimaufry of
congestion, but unless it has changed greatly in the
last nine months, the old pianos cluttering up hallways,
or landings at the head of stairways, are few and far
between. Knowing the narrowness of those eastern
hallways and the weeness of the landings at the head
of stairways, it is just to laugh—one big western
STYLE M.
an instrument that has been improved from time to
time until today its tone and its appearance proclaim
its superiority.
A sincere endeavor to produce a piano of the high-
est quality has brought the Mathushek to the high
plane where its purity and sweetness of tone are de-
lightful.
guffaw—when I read the reports of the tenement
house inspectors. Mr. Glynn and Mr. Jacob have
torn the mask off the situation, and I approve of
their action. I trust that New York some day will
put up roomier tenements for its poorer millions.
Yours truly,
OLD PIANO TUNER.
LESS SALES AND BETTER SALES
Every wideawake piano dealer has theories as to
the causes of the general condition of business this
year. Their opinions vary, making very interesting
reading. Some guess-work, some truth, some scin-
tillating opinion among them.
Following is a
bit of correspondence from a live-wire salesman
whose home is in Springfield, Ohio:
Presto Publishing Co.,
Chicago.
Gentlemen:
Never in the history of piano and radio manufac-
turing, especially the radio manufacturer, has there
been such economic shuffling.
For several years the radio industry has been a busi-
ness—that of manufacturing with all the force, and
with all the hum of machinery possible. What is the
result of this?
First, we find that after years of production, and
with the view of production only, the radio produc-
tion has come to the saturation point. Now, there
are a number of standard radios that sold for a na-
tional advertised price, and while they sold rapidly,
there were too many makers of radio for purchasers,
the result being that dealers began to cut prices to
unload.
New models coming through seemed to be a uni-
versal understanding, so the buyers stood still and are
waiting on the new models. What will be done with
the other good radios that are left on the dealers'
hands?
I have in mind one of the largest manufacturers in
this country, who about a year ago found that they
had too many finished radios, and result was that
they were at a great loss, and almost bankrupt. How-
ever, today there is a different color to this situation.
Radio manufacturers are demanding from the dis-
tributor an account of stock on hand each week, like-
wise from the distributor of the dealer. In this way
an economic situation all around will find sales for
all manufactured, and the manufacturer will know
just how to make up finished product for the market.
This same plan should have been worked out among
the piano manufacturers, and chances are that every
one related in different ways to the piano industry
would be a lot better off in dollars and general grief.
There can exist, unless curbed in some manner, an
over-production, and this state of affairs is just what
we are all going through with at this time.
I still contend, as I always have, for less sales and
better sales. Let the floaters of music-buying learn
that it takes money to buy a musical instrument, the
same as it tak*s in buying an automobile.
CLEMENT E. MOORE.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/