first gigs!

[Kevin E. Ramsey]

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Charles, you're doing fine!!  Things are harder at first. Rest assured =
that they'll get better.=20
    With a 120 cent pitch raise, you don't have to apologize for =
anything. The piano's going to want to go out of tune almost =
immediately. I would have advised them to get the piano out of the way =
of the vent, though. And next time, tell them you have to come back in a =
month, for a regular tuning.
    Live and learn, that's what you're doing, and I have to encourage =
you.=20
Kevin.
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: Charles Neuman=20
  To: pianotech@ptg.org=20
  Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 9:11 PM
  Subject: first gigs!


  I had my first two "real" customers recently (i.e. paying customers =
who I
  didn't know). I learned a few things:

  1) Both customers wanted me to be done after about 1.5 hours. It took =
me 2
  hours to tune one piano and to fix a slow key. On the other piano, it =
took
  me 2.5 hours to do a 120 cent pitch raise and a fine tuning. So in the
  future I think I'll warn ahead of time how much time I need.

  2) Since I left in a hurry, each customer got a free mute in the =
bottom of
  their piano. From now on, I'm tying two mutes together with string.

  3) It's all about the unisons.

  4) About that 120 cent pitch raise: As I was closing up the piano, I
  noticed heat from the electric baseboard heater right behind the =
piano.
  What's going to happen in the summer? Will the piano be 120 cents =
sharp?
  The fact is, the piano hadn't been tuned for 7 years, so much of the =
120
  cents might be from that. I wonder how much is from the dry heat, =
though.
  The piano was surprisingly in tune with itself for not being tuned in =
7
  years.  Kimball spinet. Not so bad. There was a little rust on the
  strings, but I used a tiny amount of CLP and also dropped pitch before
  raising. No broken strings.

  5) Using Tunelab for the pitch raise: You need to set your tuning =
curve
  before doing the pitch raise. But measuring inharmonicity is not =
accurate
  when a note is 120 cents flat as the harmonic structure is different =
than
  it will be when the note is in tune. So, you can rough tune the notes
  you'll meausure. Problem: You don't have a tuning curve yet, so how do =
you
  tune them? The Tunelab manual suggests using a generic tuning curve to
  rough tune the notes you'll use to measure inharmonicity. Since I =
haven't
  made a generic tuning curve yet, what I did was just took the =
measurements
  as the notes were (but matching up the piano's C# with Tunelab's C). =
Then
  after the pitch raise, I measured inharmonicity again and made a new
  tuning curve for the fine tuning. It worked out well. The fine tuning
  didn't require too much change, expect maybe in the top octave. But
  everything else was amazingly close.

  6) It's hard work. But then you get paid! :)

  Charles Neuman
  PTG Assoc, Long Island




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