callbacks

[Clyde Hollinger]

Friends,

Whenever I do a first-time tuning and find the piano a reasonably even
flatness, I assume that the last tuner tuned the piano flat.  Is this a false
assumption?  It seems to be, since Ron no doubt tuned this piano to pitch the
last time he tuned it, and yet it it was more or less evenly flat.

Now to a story relating to the customer's perception of "in-tuneness."

After I tuned a Baldwin Hamilton its owner said the first-octave bass notes
were off, even though they sounded fine to me.  I asked her to illustrate, and
she played them one at a time without comparing them to any other note.
Apparently she was comparing the notes to an intracranial standard, to which I
of course had no access.  I had the RCT running where she could see it while I
worked at the notes.  The final result was that she decided she liked the RCT
choices OK after all.

It's easy to get ticked at people who think they know the tuning of their
instrument better than I do, especially if it's obvious they don't know
diddly-squat about how the piano should sound.  But customer satisfaction is
just as important for them as it would be for me, so we've got to keep that in
mind (as you did, Ron).  :-)  Fortunately, such situations are rare for me, and
I guess that's why I find it easy to remember them.

Regards,
Clyde Hollinger, RPT
Lititz, PA, USA

Ron Nossaman wrote:

> I had tuned for her a couple of times before, at five or six year
> intervals.... <snip>  Getting started, I found it was a reasonably even 30
> cents or so low, even the bass.

> Two days later, responding to the call, I found the piano back in place and
> the living room furniture back snug in it's individual carpet craters.
> Checked the A. It fit right in with everything else. "It's flat", she said,
> humming to illustrate. "well, it's in tune with everything else", I said,
> "but I'll change it if you want". So I did. Pulled it up until she liked
> the sound of it, and took it down and back up until I found the spot that
> was good enough to suit her, and the least far off from everything else
> that I could get away with. Tuned the unison, and closed up. She sings, you
> see, and her ear is very sensitive to pitch deviations. Good. I'm glad I
> could make her happy and get the check. Another happy day in the trenches.