tough enough/educated clients

[chuck c]

Hi Don,

I agree with you and Les, that, overall the tuning exam is tough enough, at least it was for me - since I had to take it more than once to pass. In the Davenport/Kiel class mentioned, they were only referring to the unison section of the exam maybe being too easy, since it was demonstrably evident that even a small variance from "perfect" was apparent to all. 

I'd bet any one that knows how to set a pin and string, that's been earning money doing it for a while (IOW, serious and even with a little experience), can probably do well on the unison section on the tuning exam first time, and show their clients the ugly, the bad, and the good unison.  And though I did crow, Israel, when I finally passed the tuning exam, I knew also that it was just another starting point toward perfecting this craft.  [Hopefully now I could score better than the abysmal low 80's I got on some sections, and then I would also write home.]   

 Israel also said:  "...unisons which are off by the maximum tolerance... still
>gets you the point. People with a pair of functioning ears in their heads
>who learned how to use them wouldn't be happy with either.

Our ears are certainly more trained than most, but a lot of people can still hear when a cat is caught in the wire (bad unison).
All I was saying earlier, in answer John F.,is that anyone who is confident in their unisons can demonstrate to clients even slight variations of "out of tune" and "in tune", and most of the ones I've been showing it to recently claim to be able to hear the difference.  It's like showing them how clear a pure glass of water CAN be when placed next to a glass that's even slightly tainted. I guess, then, that by educating our clients to HEAR better, they will keep having us come back to their pianos to make them SOUND better - which means that an educated client IS a client for life, (or until retirement, or death or moving away do you part).

Chuck C.
Florida 







-----Original Message-----
>From: Leslie Bartlett <l-bartlett at sbcglobal.net>
>
>  I think there
>is yet much needed discussion about the whole issue of the tuning test.  les
>bartlett
>houston
>

>Of Israel Stein
>Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 9:00 PM

>
>At 06:11 PM 8/10/2007, Don <pianotuna at accesscomm.ca>
>  wrote:
>
>>Hi Chuck,
>>
>>It is my understanding that no one has yet received a perfect score on 
>>the tuning exam. Imho that makes it "tough enough".
>
>Don Tuna,
>
>You don't judge an exam by how hard it is to achieve perfection. You judge
>it by how easy it is to pass. And an 80% tuning isn't anything to crow
>about. Neither are unisons which are off by the maximum tolerance that still
>gets you the point... Which is why many
>tuners feel that the exam is not " tough enough".
>
>Israel Stein

> 
>