Under an hour tuning (was labor rates)

Billbrpt@AOL.COM Billbrpt@AOL.COM
Sat, 4 Aug 2001 13:58:44 EDT


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> A tuner who does a cheap job in an hour or so, may well leave the piano 
> sounding quite good, but in all probability it will deteriorate within a 
> 

I copied this phrase from the website it was suggested to visit.  That is 
precisely my point about presenting the EBVT or any other tuning at the 
Convention.  45 minutes is just enough time to set oneself up to ridicule.  
Any of the tunings I did for the Baldwin recitals took 6-8 hours.  I lost 
track of the many hours I put in on the Walter piano on which the EBVT was 
presented at the Convention in Providence.

Even in the response article I wrote about this event, I conceded that 
perhaps I was the "winner" of the event more because I had the best sounding 
piano and had spent many, many hours tuning it before I had it locked in to 
the program I had designed for it, each of the 88 notes accurate to within 
1/1000 of a semitone.  And certainly, there were those who were disturbed by 
and questioned my hours of relentless pounding.

Yet, it's true that the ordinary, every day tunings I do usually take less 
than an hour.  Many of my customers are repeat customers for whom I have 
tuned for many years.  It simply doesn't take any longer than that and their 
pianos also meet a very high degree of perfection in tuning, well beyond the 
standards of the PTG Tuning Exam.

Concert pianos on stages and console pianos in living rooms are not the same 
kinds of instruments.  I know, for example that when I am going to tune a 
Steinway grand in someone's home, the time I spend will be much more, maybe 
even double. Time spent on any particular tuning is all relative to the 
circumstances. 

Tomorrow, I will go to the Frank Lloyd Wright estate to tune for the concert 
series going on there now.  It will take me about 30 minutes to tune the 9 
foot Bechstein grand.  I know that because that's all the time it has taken 
me for several years now but each note will be solidly locked on the program 
I designed for that piano some 10 years ago.  Then I have to tune the 
harpsichord, (and that will probably take twice the time) then make the 35 
mile trip to meet my call as a principal singer and actor in the Bernstein 
show, On The Town.  Making the costume change from the first scene to the 
next one I'm in takes about the same amount of time that it takes to tune the 
Bechstein.

As it turns out, the concert tuning I will do on the 9 foot Bechstein will 
take the very least amount of time of all the activities I will do that day, 
including showering and shaving.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin

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