A-440 and Ethics.

[Ron Nossaman]

>Ron,
>
>Thanks for saying this. You did it much better than I could have!
>
>Avery


Avery,
This has been a mystery and an aggravation to me from day one. I can't tell 
you how many times I've showed up to tune a piano that was tuned six months 
ago and found it a semitone low, with the explanation that the last tuner 
was planning on raising it a bit each time it was tuned until it was 
(eventually?) up to pitch so the strings wouldn't break. The piano 
typically has the last tuner's name in it at least a couple of times, but 
it is still a yard flat. Sometimes it's still flat enough to need a pitch 
raise after YEARS of these tunings. Sheep dip and snake knuckles! Where did 
this idea originally come from? It seems to be automatically taken on faith 
everywhere, for some strange reason, but it just ain't so. This can be 
demonstrated by doing a pitch raise or two and putting the thing on pitch 
the first visit. Take notes, compare string breakage incidence per piano 
(rather than per tuning, obviously), and see if sneaking up on it at much 
greater expense to the customer breaks fewer strings in the long run. By my 
notes, it doesn't. I always assumed the marketing leverage to worry people 
into springing for more and more frequent tunings, was what the approach 
was originally for, though the tuner may innocently be under the impression 
that it actually does save the strings and just happens to not mind the 
extra work it gets him. Meanwhile, I'm now at least an explanation, a PR 
massage, and a pitch raise behind schedule (if no strings break), because 
the last guy played the sneak up on it game. And if a string does break 
during the process, it will be, in the customer's mind, because I rashly 
didn't follow the demonstrably wise and saintly conservative philosophy of 
the previous tuner who, though he obviously must have known what he was 
talking about, somehow WASN'T CALLED TO DO THIS TUNING. Why not? That's a 
tough one to get an answer to. What story does the sneaker upper tuner tell 
the customer when strings start breaking a quarter semitone shy of 440 and 
nine tunings into the process? I don't get it.

Ron N