Victor console

[Stephen Powell]

Hello List

Would appreciate comments on the following situation that I found myself in
yesterday:  New client with about a 6 yr old Victor (Korean or Indonesian,
I'm not sure) that she has owned for 4 yrs and not had tuned.  Piano was
bought from a dealer who is no longer in business.  This horrible little
piano was about 15 cents flat.  Tone and overall quality of the instrument
leaves a lot to be desired.  Anyway, I soon discovered that the pins were so
tight that I could barely turn them and so pin flex was extreme.  After
attempting to tune for about 10 minutes, I decided that I had two options:
    1. Wrestle with the piano for several hours and walk away feeling
uncomfortable with the quality of the tuning and the likely stability, with
a sore arm!;
    2. Tidy up some of the unisons so the piano would sound a little better,
take care of some misc. problems, and advise the client to trade the piano
in for a better one.

I chose option 2.  The client was disappointed to here about the problems
with the piano, but seemed to value my advise, and is looking at trading it
in.  Thankfully she wasn't too keen on the look of the piano in this huge
house (pots of money!)

Q. Do you think I did the right thing or should I have worked harder to
improve the PSO?  What if the piano had belonged to less affluent owners?
Q. Why are these  Asian (not Japanese) pianos coming out with such tight
tuning pins?  I just don't think the pins need to be nearly that tight.  Is
there an easy fix for over tight pins?  Thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

Stephen Powell RPT
Auckland, NZ

P.S.  Owners dog jumped all over me when she opened the front door.  I
really hate that.  Later damn dog grabbed something from my case and ran and
hid under a bed!  They wrestled a packet of voicing needles out of it's
mouth.  I was wishing it would swallow them and leave me alone!! (I like
animals really!).