Congrats on your RPT status, Joe. No doubt everyone on this list has a minimum of one story about these units. I know several from various colleagues, but will only share mine at the moment. The late George Defebaugh once asked me about my tuning abilities; iow, whether I felt confident and comfortable with tuning. I admitted that generally, yes, I felt I had reached a certain plateau in my skills for the time I'd been in the business. I then thought for a moment, and confessed that there was one piano where I didn't like the results (tuners are often their own worst critics), and figured that since it was the last call of the day, I must either be fatigued or was just doing something wrong. That was the only piano that I intentionally didn't charge for the tuning. I felt I didn't deserve to be paid. [Free tunings and getting paid are for another day.] Guess what piano it was? When George heard this, he chuckled and said, "In that case, don't worry about it -- nobody can tune those to any degree of satisfaction". He also advised me to always charge for my work! In keeping with the other responses so far, I was an RPT at the time (or whatever we were known as that week), tune verticals left-handed, and observe Lew Herwig's "bottom of the hole" method for tuning verticals. I also knew about "flag-poling", bridge roll, and other phenomena. The combination of knowing about and/practicing certain methods didn't help. Funny thing is, -as- I was tuning, my tests and checks were working out. The finished product was dog--meat. I feel that today I could do... better, but in the 30-plus years since the above scenario, I've never had the [opportunity] to find out. Sometimes life cuts you a break. If there's any real help in this reply, it's to not let the anomalies of one piano/scale get to you, especially to the point of discouraging your continued growth and learning curve. Okay, one more thrid-person story. You took a break -- this guy spent four hours, then came back the next day before giving up. We're not only our own worst critics, sometimes we're our own worst enemies! On 8/15/07, Joe Wiencek <jwpiano at earthlink.net> wrote: > > List, > I'm a recent RPT and caut. Today I was forced to take a break while > tuning a Steinway Model 45 piano due to the squirminess of the pitch. > Can anyone suggest a plan of attack on these particular (or any > Steinway upright) that makes for an efficient tuning session? > Thanks, > Joe > -- Jim Harvey, RPT <harvey.pianotech at gmail.com> <www.harveypiano.com> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/20070816/827b36c7/attachment.html
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