fun at the piano store!

[Diane Hofstetter]

Terry,

  I have gotten several customers who have been loyal to me for _years_ 
because the tunings went out as soon as the previous tuner left.  Those 
pianos needed to be made structurally more sound.  One was pinblock-plate 
flange gap, several were loose pinblock screws and rim bolts.  If there are 
structural problems, no amount of "setting the pin" will help.

  Time to be a sleuth!  Good luck!
  Diane

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Charly Tuner" <charly_tuner@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
To: pianotech@ptg.org
Subject: fun at the piano store!
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:39:43 PST

Hi all,

Well, I just finished logging my FIRST month as a floor tuner! All's going
great with 65+ pianos tuned in that time. I've been averaging about 15+
pianos per week , 4 days per week. About 1/3 include a pitch raise. In this
time I have also been asked to regulate and/or make minor repairs in some of
our older trade-in stock, as well as some our new "less than top of the line
models" which has been a real education!
About a week ago, I tuned a new Yamaha C5, and after I was finished, I
played it for a while and made sure it was stable, and sought out any stray
unisons and so on. i left that piano in solid tune. I reported for work, as
usual this past Monday, only to be asked by the General Manager: "Are you
making sure that you 'set the pins' when you're tuning?" Now I thought this
was a silly question, tantamount to asking a limo driver if he "remembers to
disengage the emergency brake before he starts driving" but I said that I
did, indeed. He then informed me that the SAME C5 (which I had tuned), was
now sounding "terrible", so he had the other tuner (who is much more
experienced than I, "re-tune" it. I thought to myself.."oh boy, this does
NOT make me look good." But I COULD NOT understand how a piano could "go
out" so fast! Yes, there is NO climate/humidity control of ANY kind, but
still the piano should not have gone out so fast. So...YESTERDAY I walked
into the (cold) studio where it is on display and decided to play each note
on the piano; chromatically from A0 to C8..GUESS WHAT??? almost EVERY UNISON
WAS O U T !!!!!!!!!!!! AGAIN! I immediately brought this to the attention of
the manager, hoping this would prove that my tuning was/is NOT suspect
afterall! He was a bit surprised, but it was clear that, for whatever reason
that piano went out of tune only days after EACH of us had tuned it, the
culprit was not bad tuning, but either the piano itself not holding, or more
likely because of wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity.

Terry


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