first gigs!

[Z! Reinhardt]

Way To Go Charles!

Sounds like you're off to a good start.  It's all about practice.  As you
get more familiar with pianos in general,
with common repairs and adjustments, the more efficiently you can work and
the better you could estimate the time necessary to do what's best.

+  More stuff below ....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Neuman" <piano@charlesneuman.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 11:11 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:

+  That's only the beginning.  The beauty of this work is that you'll never
be at a loss for something new to learn about.
:
: 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.

+  As you gain experience, you'll get a good idea of how long a job might
take.  Even after 15 years in this business, I still like to have at least 2
hours in the first encounter with a piano.  I'll tell the customer up
front about this.  They might insist that the piano "only needs tuning ...
and the last guy did it in just 50 minutes" to which I'll counter with
something along the lines that a piano has only 12 thousand parts, and I
want to make sure they are all working together properly.
:
: 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.

+  Try locking the loops together on a pair of wire-handled mutes.  Twist
the loop of one far enough to slip the loop of the other through it, then
twist it back to prevent them from coming apart.  One mute is used normally
while the other dangles over the hammer rest rail in an upright.  In a
grand, they can straddle a plate strut making in possible to mute off the
strings nearest the strut.
:
: 3) It's all about the unisons.

+  You got that one right.  Wait until you get into concert work ...!
:
: 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.

+  Congratulations for not breaking any strings on a spinet!  Changing a
string on a spinet takes a] unusual patience, b] the right tools (the
Stringer from Pianotek makes it possible to thread new wire down behind the
action) or c] the willingness to rip out the action to get at the
all-important hitchpin and bridgepins, then stuff it all back together
again.  Removing and reinstalling an action in a spinet is time-consuming
nit-picky work ... not something you would want to do when you're pressed
for time.  This has been a brutal winter for pianos here in the North --
unusually
cold and dry.  Good for you for noticing the heat source behind the piano.
Did you advise the customer about the possibility of moving it away from it?
Come summer ... most likely there will be some measurable
humidity, only some of which may be controlled by air conditioning.
:
: 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.

+  I think the secret of doing good pitch raises is to work as fast as you
dare.  We already know that multiple passes result in a tuning that is more
stable than a single all-in-one pass.
:
: 6) It's hard work. But then you get paid! :)
:
: Charles Neuman
: PTG Assoc, Long Island

+  And then you'll learn more ...!

Z! Reinhardt  RPT
Ann Arbor  MI
diskladame@provide.net