How Soon to Tune?

[Richard Brekne]

My own take on this is that it depends on the amount of prep work and
tuning done in the store. If the customer gets it right out of the
box...
well its going to need work right away. If its well prepared and tuned
prior to delivery (and it should be) my own experience says to wait
about 3 months, which
usually puts you into another season and a different climate. After that
tuning I recommend that the customer have the instrument tuned twice
within the following year. Then at the very least once a year service.
All
my experience tells me that the better start a piano has in the home
envioronent, the longer it will last and the better it will preform. One
could easily tune a piano 72 hours after delivery, but you cant get away
from the fact that if the climatic conditions differ significantly from
that of the store, the piano is going to react and will need tuning, and
perhaps other service.

Richard Brekne
I.C.P.T.G.  N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway


>
>  Most piano stores provide a free home tuning with piano sales.
> Usually, they have a cadre of technicians and assign these tunings
> with
> "Service Bonds" to one of their crew. The manager at one store
> instructed technicians to contact customers within ten days of the
> delivery date posted on the service bond. I did this consistently.
> Many
> times, the customer would explain that their sales person instructed
> them to wait for periods of weeks before having the piano tuned in
> order
> that the instrument become properly acclimated to its new
> surroundings.
>
>         I have discussed this waiting period with a number of other
> technicians and store salesmen and there appears to be a serious
> debate
> about the issue. I'd be interested in views of some informed parties.
> My
> own personal bias is that anything more than 72 hours would be
> unnecessary. But I'm willing to learn.
>
>         Could you run that up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes?
>
>                                         Mark Stern
>
> Jeannie Grassi, RPT
> Assistant Editor, Piano Technicians Journal
> mailto:jgrassi@silverlink.net