Here comes the pitch

[Jim Johnson]

I have a tuner in my area who does the same exact thing.  I have been 
observing this for over 23years now. This tuner does not tell the customer 
that the piano will not be at proper pitch and they then believe that the 
job was done correctly.  The problem is that the customers will tell me that 
the piano was just tuned a few months ago and I look bad when I try to 
explain that it needs a pitch raise and tuning which costs more.  I 
sometimes tuned a piano at a lower pitch for a variety of reasons, but the 
customer always gets a full explaination and is given a choice after 
explaining the risks, if any.  I never raise the pitch on a piano that is 
showing obvious sign of self-destruction.  I have raised the pitch 
successfully on literally dozens of my competetor's former customer's pianos 
over the years and have never found one that I couldn't raise without a 
problem.  Unfortunately, he's a Guild member. Oh, well.  I'm glad that the 
RPT examinations are more challenging now than they used to be.   -----  
Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 12:54 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
>
>