Service call frustration?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Kevin E. Ramsey]

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Look, we get some of these from time to time. I had one lady who said a =
buzz was driving her nuts. It occured on D#4 and E4 only, apparently.. =
After going and listening to it on hard, soft, and medium blows I =
couldn't hear a buzz. I was starting to think my hearing was going bad. =
Turns out what she was hearing was duplex noise.  I'll bet that your =
customer was from the Orient, sometimes I think Asians go out of their =
way to find things to worry about. Give an oriental lady a Baldwin, and =
she'll write you a novel about how all the notes have different =
characteristics, you just do your best voicing on the piano and when =
they start listening to differences in individual notes you ask them, =
"Is that how you play the piano? I always thought that you played the =
piano by playing more than one note at a time....."  When they do that, =
of course, they don't notice the individual notes, but rather how the =
whole piano sounds when played...

Just my two (some P.C.people would say racist) cents..

Kevin E. Ramsey, R.P.T.
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: Topperpiano@aol.com=20
  To: pianotech@ptg.org=20
  Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 6:05 PM
  Subject: Service call frustration?!?!?!?!?!?!


  Just thought I'd vent on a most perplexing service call today.  Last =
week I went to do a trouble shooting call for a local dealer.  The =
customer, who is a very accomplished pianist, had purchased a new very =
expensive piano.  The customer only spoke very limited English.  Other =
than a few slightly wobbly unisons there was nothing really wrong with =
the piano.  The piano had been nicely prepped, was well regulated and =
voiced evenly.  Last week I spent over an hour with the customer and =
could not discern one iota of what her complaint could possibly be.  She =
would play a note several times and say "sound." Then she would look at =
me as if to get assurance that I too heard the offending problem.  Some =
of the notes that she objected to had the slightly off unisons so I =
cleaned up the tuning.  This did not phase her.  Finally I got some =
paper, took the fallboard off, pointed out the numbers on the keys and =
made a chart and asked her to mark Like, Not Like on each key, hoping to =
see some similarity in the likes and not likes.  I also mentioned that =
if we could get someone who spoke English that it might go better.  This =
week when I returned she indeed had a friend who spoke much better =
English.  The chart was filled with remarks like "Not beautiful, more =
exact, finish sooner, too over, etc.  After mUUUUUch discussion with the =
friend I discovered that her main complaints were the undamped high =
treble notes sustaining, some impact sounds of the hammer hitting the =
string in the top octave, and the dampers in the bass not cutting off =
rapidly enough on a very hard blow.  There was not one problem that did =
not fall squarely in the range of normalcy.  I spent two hours trying to =
explain that there no dampers in the high treble and that the dampers in =
the bass were not under performing and I voiced three hammers in the top =
octave to see if that would eliminate some offending sound.  I left =
feeling very unsuccessful with no idea whether or not the customer was =
appeased.  She waived good-bye to me and had her friend tell me that she =
would call the store and ask for me when she needed to have it tuned.  =
Oh Boy! TP 
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