President's Message

[David Love]

She likes it tuned high because she's deaf at those frequencies.  You have
to decide whether you will do custom tunings for people who are unable to
hear.  I had a customer like that.  He kept calling me back telling me the
treble was sharp.  Finally, I said ok, I'll play an octave and start pulling
the upper note and you tell me when to stop.  Got to about a minor tenth
before he said sounds good now, clean octave.  So I did that with the rest
of the notes in the last octave.  Fortunately I didn't break anything.  I
charged him an extra $30 for the "custom tuning", asked him not to tell
anyone who tuned his piano and suggested he get his hearing checked.  Not
surprisingly, I didn't hear from him after that.  I wasn't real
disappointed.

I think people do have a right to what they want, historical temperaments,
stretched treble or bass, whatever as long as it's within reason and
achievable without pure guesswork.  My only requirement is that they tell me
in advance and if their specific requests take me longer, I charge them
more.  Also, if they sit and listen and make comments while I am tuning, I
charge them double.  

I see no problem with what Kent wrote.  

David Love
davidlovepianos@comcast.net 

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Ric Brekne
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 5:49 PM
To: pianotech
Subject: President's Message

Kent Swafford writes:

 I won't alter a tuning to its detriment  
to please a customer; customers should be willing to play my tuning  
and give it a chance. Maybe they will like it after a full tryout.  
The point is if I immediately return to a piano as the result of a  
callback, when I get there we may still disagree about whether the  
tuning is good. An optimist would say I might turn the situation  
around by showing good faith and willingness to serve by returning. A  
cynic might say, the customer will end up trying somebody different  
anyway, so an immediate return is pointless.

-------------------

I gotta admit... this snip is even more disturbing then the first post. 

First let me say that a customer has a perfect write to their 
preferences. If one is dealing with someone who has some real sense of 
what they want... tuning wise or soundboard wise or whatever wise... 
then its our job to attempt to provide that for them.  If we as a tech 
do not wish to provide that service for any particular instance then 
fine... fair enough... leave it and go.  An instance of this is 
historical temperaments... but it just a well applies to a stretch 
preference, or even something as specific as a single note.  Our only 
task in such instance is to deem whether or not the customer is serious 
minded or not.

I have an older lady that for whatever reasons likes the highest section 
of the treble tuned very high.  Its quite strange really, starts at E7.  
All of a sudden her <<tuning curve>> steepens radically.. way off the 
chart.  But thats what she likes.... thats what gives her satisfaction.  
(ETD's are great for finding out this kind of thing).  Clear cut... 
<<detrimental>> (according to my tastes) or not... who the heck am I to 
impose upon this lady my definition of what sounds right ?

no no no no no....  People have a right to like what they like, be it 
historical temperments, low basses, high trebles, old flatened and 
thined out soundboards, this make or that.  We have no rights whatsoever 
in defining to the world about us what others should or should not 
appreciate.  If a customer is sincere in there desires.. then we should 
be sincere in our willingness to help provide those.

JMT
RicB



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