I just wanted to say: My local dealer does NOTHING to pianos before delivery. A piano is uncrated, set up in the store (maybe) to acclimate, and delivered to the home of the owner. Unless there is something wrong that he feels the customer would discover. Then who knows what he does to fix it. I used to get warranty tunings but no more. He does not even give the customer the name of a technician for follow up service i.e. me. He does not suggest any service at all after the sale. Can you say "I bought this piano 10 years ago but nobody said I had to tune it?" Used pianos are even worse - No repairs. No tuning. Nothing. Oh, except some Old English on the finish if it needs to "look newer and cover up the scratches". I went to a customer who bought a used upright from this dealer, he said it had had a floor tuning. She called me and I found the piano 150 cents under pitch. She could hear it was bad and thought there was something wrong with the piano. Mind you these were very good customers, meaning the husband was a lawyer and they only bought the used one to see if their children would continue to play the piano. In the future they were going to buy a new grand - a player if their kids quit playing. However, their confidence is lost in this dealer now that I tuned the upright and they were both home during and heard what it required to bring it to pitch. I could go on. I have resolved myself to not fret over it. *sigh* I still get referral work from this dealer and use of the shop when needed. I also get a small spiff if I have a client buy a piano from this dealer. Which I do because then this dealer is forced to give me the follow up work. I just hope that as these other pianos need service they will find me or someone in the future so the instrument can be properly cared for. I've really wanted to say that for a long time. Now it is off my chest. Thanks for listening. Steven Hopp From: karlkaputt at hotmail.com To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:29:28 +0100 Subject: Re: [pianotech] prepping before sale Yes, strange business. But in the end we are far better off than the computer and software industry. If the piano industry were like the computer industry, the pianos had problems like this: Casual misfunction of the left pedal. We had to fix it with a trick: engaging right pedal while pressing F4 and turning the key in the lock. Regular misfunction of the right pedal, repairable only with a complete reboot,, i.e. closing and re-opening lid and fallboard! Yamaha were not compatible with Mozart and we could not play Bach on Steinway. Pianos were playable only in the middle octaves. Advanced users would need an activation code for the upper and lower octaves. Unfortunately this basic mode includes white keys only. For the sharps we needed an extra license. We could play only tunes that were published until the date of delivery. For contemporary music in the future we had to upgrade to PianoVista or Piano7.0. Macintosh would produce a piano that were cheaper, easier to play, better sounding and with much less failures, but this piano would be bought by only 5 percent of all customers. Casual warnings in the built-in display like this: you played A4 together with A#4. This is an unsusual interval. Are you sure? Please verify: PRESS ANY KEY (available only in concert grands with recital mode) Lot of spam in every song in the form of “uninvited guest notes” Viruses and worms lead to permanent string breakage Perfectioning of the Banana Priciple: product maturates at customers home. Yes, really strange business. Gregor ------------------------------------------ piano technician - tuner - dealer Münster, Germany www.weldert.de From: surfdog at metrocast.net To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:38:02 -0500 Subject: Re: [pianotech] prepping before sale Bingo Will Truitt From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Gregor _ Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 2:57 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] prepping before sale Wow, hard stuff. I don´t know which brand you are talking about, but why is this manufacturer still in business? Who would like to sell these financial boomerangs? I mean it pays off only when the margin is extremely high and the price is extremely low. Then the customer would perhaps accept a lousy piano and the dealer would accept some prepp work. But even that business model does not seem to be reasonable. Strange business. Gregor ------------------------------------------ piano technician - tuner - dealer Münster, Germany www.weldert.de From: tunerboy3 at comcast.net To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:17:16 -0500 Subject: Re: [pianotech] prepping before sale Personally, what I am encountering are things such as very shallow key dip which is causing terrible bobbling hammers. I am finding terribly unregulated pianos in general. Now, these particular pianos that I am talking about are pianos that are brand new pianos. It is also the same manufacturer. Although, I do encounter this with other brands but not to this extent. Rather than prepping them in the store or at least removing them from the crate and checking them first, many times, the store will drop them off still uncrated; opening up the crate at the location leaving the total prep work up to the tuner. In many instances, that technician is me. There is a LOT of prep work in most but not all cases. Over the years, I have found things such as loose pedal lyres. Pedal lyres coming unglued from not only the top of the lyre but from the bottom box as well. I am finding damper upstop rails that will not stay put unless you drill a hole through it to secure it. You can adjust and tighten it down as HARD as you want but yet, within a few months to a year, it has come loose again allowing dampers to "clank" on the upswing. Yes, I regulate the pedals and make sure the dampers are not forcing it upward but yet, the screws work themselves loose again and again and again. I am finding very noisy squeaking pedals on both grand's and verticals. I am finding squeaking key beds when the soft pedal is used on grand's. I am finding knocking keybeds on grand's. I have found MANY loose hammer heads, loose hammer butts, loose butt heels, loose shanks and warped hammer shanks. I am also finding key beds that are apparently moving from seasonal changes. Now, I am not positive about the cause of this last one but this is the most sensible cause to me and I suppose it could be something else. If so, I'm not sure what. Yet, when I ask the factory what they think the cause and fix is via email, I do not get an answer. You know what? I am even finding loose tuning pins. I can regulate the vertical's in August at which time it may have bobbling hammers. Many times by February with the weather being completely different, the opposite has taken place. Now I have hammers blocking on the strings. I can regulate it again in December, January or February and then by next July or August, the opposite has once again taken place. They are bobbling again and also have shallow keydip. Their excuse is weather changes. Oh yeah? Then why don't I have the same problem with most other brands? I have talked with the manufacturer dozens and dozens of times over the years and have even met with them about this. While I have seen "some improvement" after 5-10 years of informing them about it, the improvement is not yet good enough----actually, it is far from it. Therefore, I no longer recommend that brand to any of my clients. I sell a lot of pianos for the dealers through my recommendations so they are losing plenty of sales over it. Now, wouldn’t you think they would listen to us out there in the field and improve and prevent instead of ignorning us? This is what I hear most often from both the dealer and manufacturer. "We've never heard this before" or, "we've never heard this from anyone else." What do they think we are, stupid? To that, I say BULL!!! Because in talking with many other techs about it, many of them are encountering the same things on these same pianos. I see no excuse for pianos leaving the factory in this kind of condition. I'm sure many of you have encountered these same things and know exactly what brand piano I am referring too but please keep it silent. They too, know who they are. There is simply no reason why any piano should leave the factory like this. Jer From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2009 3:57 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] prepping before sale Gregor. As I said in a previous post, there are some dealers who are very fastidious about making sure their pianos are prepped before they leave the store. But for the most part, regardless of the quality of their pianos, the most a dealer will do after un-crating a piano, is have it tuned, and perhaps make minor repairs to sticking keys or hanging up dampers. The tuners are often those who have been in the business for only a short period of time, and are still developing their skills. As a result, even if their tuning technique is satisfactory, they do not have the know how to evaluate what else needs to be done to the piano to make it play and sound better. Even if the tuner has enough experience to make the necessary regulations, some dealers don't want to spend the money to have the work done. When I first got to Hawaii, I started working for dealer who carries middle of the road products, and a high end grand piano line. He allowed me to spend 6 hours prepping one of his new high end grands. When I mentioned this to another tuner who had been working for this dealer, he said he never got permission to do that kind of prep work. When I worked for a dealer in Alabama, he would give me permission to do what ever it took to make the pianos right. But what he would not do is let me call the customer to schedule an appointment to tune the piano after it was delivered. He would give them a coupon good for a free piano tuning, but it was good for only 6 months. Most customers would call me after about 2 years, but the dealer would honor the "coupon", except that the customer would have to pay me the difference between my pitch raise fee, and my normal tuning fee. And any time the customer called with a complaint, I had permission to do what ever it took to make the piano right, and he would pay me. When I owned a store in St. Louis, all of the new pianos that arrived got a good going over, either by me, or one of my employees. I didn't care how long it took to get the piano "right". My used pianos, too, were made to play, sound, and look, as good as they could, without doing major replacement of parts, unless the piano was worth it. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician 94-505 Kealakaa Str. Mililani, Oahu, HI 96789 808-349-2943 808-349-2943 www.Bleespiano.com Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Gregor _ <karlkaputt at hotmail.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Sat, Nov 28, 2009 12:08 am Subject: [pianotech] prepping before sale I miss a point in the ongoing prepping discussion: what do you exactly do before you sale a new piano? Regarding all the posts one could assume that new pianos arrive in a wimpy condition at the dealer. Is it really so? Perhaps we should differentiate between high and low end pianos. As a dealer I would accept that a low budget piano arrives in another condition than a high end piano. In the first line I sell used upright pianos and I have only one brand in stock that I sell new: Wendl & Lung. Although it´s a low budget piano it arrives in a very good condition in my store. When they arrive in Germany a German collegue makes the end control and some prepp work, e.g. string seating, string mating, tuning, voicing and a rough contoll of the regulation. Not till then it gets delivered to the dealers. My part is to work on the key balance holes, tightening the action screws and to tweak the regulation if needed or desired. But I am talking about a economically priced Chinese piano, so I don´t care about a key drop of 10.5 mm instead of 10 mm. I seldom refine the regulation and I had many professional players or teachers in my store who were thrilled not oly about the sound but also about how they can play the action just in the condition the piano arrived at my store. Will mentioned that many manufacturers don´t pound in the pianos. I can´t belive that. I am sure that e.g. every German factory uses a pounding in machine and even a Chinese producer like Wendl & Lung (Hailun) uses it. Look at the video on step 8. Delivery without pounding in is senseless and I think even most of the cheap manufacturers are aware of it. http://www.wendl-lung.com/jart/prj3/wendl_lung/main.jart?rel=en&content-id=1225437990106&reserve-mode=active ; Selling an used piano is another story. This is what I do on every used upright (I seldom work on grands): -string seating -tightening all action screws and if necessary changing center pins -lubricating damper springs and damper rod -hammer reshaping -burning hammer shanks -travelling hammers -hammer string mating -polishing and lubricating key pins and capstans -key levelling -regulation and voicing -new felts on trapwork With used pianos I get paid for that work with my margin. New pianos should leave my store in the same prepped state, but they require much less work, at least the Wendl & Lung. I can´t compare with other brands as I don´t sell other brands. So, what are your experiences with other brands? What has to be done? 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