Sunday ramblings

[Ron Nossaman]

> Hey, fellow artisans------
> 
> Now I know, a little bit, what it's like to live where the humidity 
> changes constantly; we're in a literally unprecedented stretch of 
> dryness here in Southern California, and I'm having to do 2 passes on 
> almost every piano I tune, even the super-stable bi-weekly or monthly 
> ones. Yow. It's a lotta woik. But a lot of cashola; I charge $50 for an 
> "easy" pitch raise---between 2 and 4 cents below pitch, the high treble 
> on or close to pitch---and $75 for anything further down than that.

Hey David,
You got a tiny taste, but you're not quite there yet. Now try 
that with the tenor changing 20c sharp and flat with the 
seasons as a matter of course - year after year after year. 
Charging a new customer for a pitch raise on a neglected piano 
is something they can understand, but charging for a pitch 
lowering six months later will almost guarantee you'll never 
see them again. If you explained all this thoroughly enough 
with the first visit, you might (but most likely won't) be 
selling them a Dampp-Chaser with the second. Even with a rare 
well maintained Dampp-Chaser, I've nearly never (if EVER) seen 
a piano stay within 4c throughout, with the shift from 
winter/summer/winter. A mere 4c correction is a real luxury 
for me.


> It's fascinating; I find that, even in pianos that I've tuned constantly 
> for years, the VSP---the Virgil Smith Phenomenon---
> when the pitch of a single unison string will change to some degree when 
> the other two strings are brought into tune with it---gets more intense, 
> and sometimes in a slightly different pattern, when the board and 
> bridges have been subjected
> to, in our case, a consistently 20-25 point lower RH average for the 
> last 6-8 months.  Why is that, O spatial and mechanical genii?Nossaman? 
> Overs?

I don't know.
Ron N