old uprights

[Dave Nereson]

<The old upright. Geeeeezzz. The old upright. Hmmm. First you spend 20
minutes trying to talk the owner out of doing anything with it. After
failure at that (although I do not always fail!), you tune three notes -
pound in a tuning pin - tune a few more - now you gotta stop because you
have a jack flange unglued - fix that - bla, bla, bla, - hammers flying
off - bla, bla, bla, - you know the picture here - even though you charge
extra to fix the jack flange and unglued hammer butt leather, and broken
hammer, etc., etc., it still slows you down big time. I find that old
uprights will take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to tune - plus the repairs.>

Don't agree to a price on the phone--just give them a range for pianos that
are up to pitch and in reasonably good condition.  When you get there,
seeing that it's an old upright, quickly see how low the pitch is, if the
wood of the action parts is real dark (if so, it's probably been in a damp
climate and those parts may be brittle, loose, coming unglued), and how
dusty the action is and how worn the hammers are (if it hasn't been cleaned
or had hammers filed & reshaped recently or ever, it probably hasn't had
much else done to it either).  Then explain that the fee for tuning is for a
regular hour, hour-and-a-half tuning for a piano that's in good condition
and close to pitch.  Point out that these old uprights are 80, 90 years old,
that pianos don't live by tuning alone, and that they'd be better off having
some reconditioning work done first.
    Or just say you charge $XX/hour and you'll do what you can in an hour or
two hours or whatever.  If parts start flying off and strings break left and
right, stop! and tell them it needs more than just tuning.  They don't know.
They think all pianos ever need is tuning and that tuning cures all ills.
                --Sincerely, David Nereson, RPT