-- forwarded message, please reply to sender and MMD --

Hi Robbie,  I'm curious as to how many player piano technicians rebuild
player stacks in the shop and then bring them back to the customer's
house.

Most of the time Wayne and I try to bring home only the action stack,
and then re-install it at the customer's house, because we don't like
the liability of having the piano at our shop and we simply don't have
the space.  Plus, most of the player stacks that we work on are pretty
straightforward; if the job involves restringing or major woodworking
such as making a bass bridge, we always bring the piano here to our
shop.

But now I'm involved in rebuilding a 1915 Steinway Duo-Art upright that
had been partially rebuilt previously and it wasn't a very professional
job.  The customer is being very adamant that I do the whole job at his
21st floor penthouse(!), but after getting into it I'm finding numerous
problems like white glue all over the place and lots of unrepaired wood
rot; the piano apparently spent much of its life in a tropical climate.

So I'm just curious as to how other technicians handle their rebuilding
jobs in customer's homes.

Diane DeTar
San Diego, CA

 [ Diane and partner Wayne Johnston were married last September 20th,
 [ 2003, after several happy years together.  I understand they still
 [ have separate workbenches, though, so that Diane can work on
 [ pneumatic instruments while Wayne services and installs solenoid
 [ players and maintains the computers.  Congratulations, newlyweds!
 [ -- Robbie