There was a lot of rust on the strings and It looked like they had been replaced in a few sections, about 10 notes at a time. I can imagine that they just started breaking one after the other during a tuning. Here's my most optimistic guess:
Maybe the tech who worked on it before me had to do it all very last minute and was in the middle of fixing things when he was asked to stop. Not that it explains coils that sloppy, but still... In my case they had called me for an "emergency" tuning. I got there at 3:30 for a 6pm performance and the performers started trickling in almost immediately after I arrived. While tuning I found G3 was blocking dead against the strings...I jumped to fixing that as soon as I realized it. It was a loose jack tender (thank you CA glue). I put the action back in while the room got noisier (two college choirs). By the time I had the lower and middle sections tuned up to about C5 they started doing soundchecks. The sound guy from time to time asked me to lay out and then at some point I realized it was more of a rehearsal than a soundcheck and I had been sitting around waiting for a long time.
In retrospect I am taking this as a lesson in communication--there are so many questions I could have asked both before accepting the job and also while I was there that could have helped me better serve them. I kept thinking it was just a soundcheck and they would be done any minute and then I could hurry up and finish. However, 5 minutes became 10 which ultimately became about an hour. I had more than enough time to go to my truck to get my stringing kit, do the repair, make some extra money, and remedy the situation for good during the time I waited on them to finish "soundchecks".
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Brandon Robertson
Gardendale AL
205-612-5544
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