Here comes the pitch

[JOHN ROSS]

I ran into the low pitch, scenario a few times. The fellow who had tuned 
them previously, was vision impaired, so I assumed, he was erring on the 
side of safety, to lessen the chance of string breakage.
Never did get around to asking him, why.
John Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 4:54 PM
Subject: Here comes the pitch


>
> Mid morning, I tuned (at) a Wurlitzer spinet, with a half-to three quarter 
> semitone pitch raise. No surprise there, but I got to looking at the 
> printing on the keys inside and noted the last two times it was tuned. On 
> 9/27/97, it was "tuned @ 1/8 low", it said. I wondered why such a moderate 
> pitch raise wasn't done with the tuning. Then on 10/21/2000, it was "R to 
> A435", according to the next key. Again, why wasn't it brought up to 
> pitch? I looked it over, and found no indication that it wasn't 
> structurally sound enough to bring up, so I did, and tuned (at) it at 
> pitch.
>
> A stop on the way back for lunch, to look over a Kimball console they 
> wanted to sell, found a piano in not bad shape, and over a semitone low. 
> Again, the keys indicated that the same guy had tuned it in 1998, and left 
> it over a half semitone low.
>
> I find this guy's name in low pitched pianos all around, and he seems 
> pathologically reluctant to pull anything at all up to pitch. I don't get 
> it. A piano that got 50 cents low naturally is so uneven that it won't 
> tune in one pass at any pitch  even if the center is left at it's 
> approximate pitch, so why not make two full passes and pull the bloody 
> thing up where it at least has a chance of ending up where it's supposed 
> to be? The owners of these two pianos paid this guy to tune their pianos 
> and he didn't even make an attempt. Many times, I've explained the need 
> for a big pitch raise to an incredulous first time customer who can't 
> understand the need because the piano was just tuned a year or two ago. 
> "Why didn't the last tuner do that"?  Why indeed?
>
> Off to tune one of my redesigns. This ought to feel like a vacation.
>
> Ron N
>