Economy restoration involves doing the most work for the least money.  And the best way I know to do this is to call upon the services of a rebuilding factory.  We are a custom shop. We are just two, and cannot handle great volumes of projects ourselves. For this we must turn to a wholesale rebuilder.  The leader in this field is a Texas firm by the name of SAMA.  In El Paso, they operate what can only be called a factory.  By utilizing economies of scale,and employing as many as 40 people at a time, they can do more work on a budget than we could even consider.  If you visit their website, they offer two basic package deals.  One is a new finish and complete belly package.  The other is a new finish only.  The complete package covers just about everything except the action, which we would handle here.  This, however, leads me to my big warning.

        There is nothing exclusive about SAMA, which is to say that they offer their services to any qualified piano professional.  This is good because through them many technicians, without shops of their own, can offer their customers services that would be unavailable to the community otherwise.  The problem is that some technicians fail to tell their customers that they are jobbing the piano out.  This leaves the customer with the impression that they are doing the work personally.  This just does not sit right with us.  If a customer comes to me because of my reputation, then they are expecting to be purchasing my work.  If I am selling them something else, then that customer has a right to know.   On their website SAMA does give a suggested price for their work.  Should a technician fail to tell a customer that their piano is going to SAMA, then they are free to charge more than what even SAMA feels is fair.  SAMA does fairly nice work, and so much of it that it makes this maneuver easy to pull off.  It does not make it right..

        On the other hand, because we do run a shop, and are grateful for anything that frees up more time, we are more than happy to offer you the services of SAMA at a strong discount from their retail.  If you feel that your technician is being less than forthcoming, then you should ask to visit you piano at various points in its reconstruction to take pictures.  If you can visit when you want, then you are working with a real rebuilder.  If not, then you should call us, because we will save you a lot of money on the selfsame service.  That would leave money in the budget to put toward the action, like enough for a new set of hammers.  Economy restoration is about getting it done for the best price, this is how we propose to accomplish it

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