Defending your tuning

[Diane Hofstetter]

You're right on, Tom.   You have been helpful to several of your clients 
now, who have hearing problems.  Your way of looking at the problem is more 
wholistic than the tuner who only sees it from his own point of view.

If the client has a hearing loss, it is frequently helpful to him to have an 
outsider's objective opinion about his hearing.  Often there have been 
battles within the family.  When one man complained about the top octave to 
me, I said to him;  "I can hear that part just fine, do you think you might 
have some hearing loss?"  The relief just washed over him.  He told me that 
his daughter had been on him to get some hearing aids--maybe he should look 
into it.

Then if their hearing aid isn't adjusted right, it's necessary to work with 
it until it is, so sending them to a hearing specialist is a good move.  
Like voicing a piano, you have to adjust the hearing aids to the player's 
(patient's) hearing.  The only difference is that you can't hear what they 
are hearing through the hearing aid, whereas you can hear whether the piano 
is in good tune or well voiced.

I'm not an audiologist, but received my degree as a hearing instrument 
specialist last month, and my Washington State license last Friday.

I have a friend in the Portland chapter who has been a satisfied hearing aid 
wearer for many many years, who recently bought a pair of new digital aids 
from his long-time specialist.  They have been trying, unsuccessfully, for 
about two months to adjust them for tuning, with no luck.  He tells me that 
if tomorrow's session is not successful, he's coming to me.

Or rather, I will be going to him.  My fitting equipment is in a Dell laptop 
computer so I will be able to sit next to him at the piano while he is 
tuning and make the necessary adjustments and re-adjustments according to 
how he hears the piano, the beats, the voicing, etc.

I have always wanted to make the player's piano sound wonderful to him, the 
next logical step (with all us baby boomers reaching THAT age) was to make 
all sounds sound wonderful to him--including his piano.

Here's hoping!
Diane




Diane Hofstetter




----Original Message Follows----
From: Thomas Cole <tcole at cruzio.com>
Reply-To: tcole at cruzio.com, Pianotech List <pianotech at ptg.org>
To: Pianotech List <pianotech at ptg.org>
Subject: Re: Defending your tuning
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:51:43 -0700

Geoff,

A person's hearing can be a touchy subject and putting the problem on the 
player's perception can sound like a tuner not taking responsibility for his 
own poor workmanship. But the times I've run into this kind of disagreement, 
it has been a hearing problem or wrongly-programmed digital hearing aids. 
Recently the problem was that the wearer was operating the hearing aid 
improperly. I recommended consulting with a second audiologist who helped 
her to put things right and now I have a very grateful customer (with a 
Bosie 7'4" :-)

My approach has been to verify the tuning carefully, both digitally and 
aurally as you did and, having passed all the tests, I can then only certify 
the piano as tuned. The one time I tried to accommodate the player, who 
wanted one low bass note retuned, I could see that they wanted it far, far 
from in tune and retreated back to what I knew to be in tune. It's best if 
you quietly hold to your standards and simply suggest they get a second 
opinion.

Is there an audiologist in the house?

Tom Cole


Geoff Sykes wrote:

>Greetings all --
>  This afternoon I did a repair tuning on a Yamaha C3. By repair I mean 
>that the owner of the piano felt that the tuning from the previous tuner, 
>two months ago, left a lot to be desired. Once I checked it out I had to 
>agree. Anyway, I tune the piano up and make it all right again and the 
>owner sits down and plays it a bit when I'm done and complains that the 
>treble, especially the area around sixth octave, is sharp. OK, I pull out 
>my trusty Reyburn Cybertuner and double check the tuning, and it's right 
>on. Just to make sure, I put the ETD away and do aural checks all the way 
>up from about F5. Everything checks out good, but the owner still insists 
>that it's sharp. Since he's not complaining about every single treble note, 
>but just a half dozen or so, I strip mute the treble and work with him on 
>each note that he is unhappy with. Doing a number of checks, including some 
>of his, I get to a point where I just can't make the note any flatter and 
>still claim the piano is in tune. I'm bringing notes down so flat that they 
>are full of fast beats and the octave is just ruined, and he's still 
>complaining that they sound flat. By this time I've disagreed with him 
>enough that he's starting to, (finally), question his own perception. I 
>suggest we leave it where it is and when I come back for the next tuning I 
>will make a point of reducing the amount of stretch in the treble to as 
>close to nothing as I can make it. He says OK.
>  Rather than go through this again, as well as learn from the experience, 
>I'm looking for ways to work with a customer who is obviously hearing 
>incorrectly but who I, nevertheless, want to satisfy. Today's question: How 
>do you defend a tuning that you know, and can prove, is correct when the 
>customer says it is not?
>  -- Geoff Sykes
>-- Los Angeles