Hi Ron(Aust) Thanks for the input. The piano is about 6 yrs old and according to the hall people it gets about 12 tunings a year and the pitch is tuned between 440 and 442 depending on the user. So I presumed the backscale tension will be high. When I took over the job 3 months ago the tuning was sometimes stable, but many times no. I Will try your rub down way and pounding the next time I tuned it. And am glad you are busy! Regards Lim Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld Powered by Gee! from StarHub -----Original Message----- From: Ron Overs <sec at overspianos.com.au> Sender: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:43:12 To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Reply-To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Tuning stability problem >So Ron: > >How much do you charge for a piano massage? > >Will Truitt :-) Hi Will, I'll try to remain serious amongst the jesting commentators, lol. What I charge depends on how much extra time is involved. Sometimes it might cost little more than a straight tuning if the overall pitch doesn't change too much, while on other occasions the piano might never have been rubbed down, which might result in a dramatic increase in the tuning work required to straighten the beast. To follow on from Ron N's comment that the backscale tension can be up as well as down, I agree it can, but with pianos that haven't seen service for some years the most usual scenario is for the tension to be lower. Typically, for a piano which hasn't seen a tech for a few years, I might spend 10 minutes on a rub down, 15 minutes adjusting lost motion, and another 15 minutes after the tuning doing something about the voicing. This would take 2/3 hour on top of the tuning. I charge A$75 per hour so the overall fee would go up from our base tuning fee of A$190 to A$240. If I have to do a pitch raise it would cost more again, but often not by as much as the 30 minutes it generally takes for the pitch raise. Mostly, when a pitch raise is necessary, it allows for the tuning to be done a bit quicker because the pitch raise sets the piano up to be a bit easier than it might be if one were to do a tuning without a pitch raise a year or two since the last service. If I strike a piano where the voicing is particularly nasty (bright), I'll get the needles out and lay into the piano as a first voicing stage, just to give my ears a bit easier time of it during the tuning. I'll spend a little more time, at the end, refining the voicing once its in tune. It just amazes me how many pianos get tuned repeatedly without any other work being done, while the voicing continues to simply scream. Often the clients hate their piano on account of its brightness and, once it is voiced to sound more like a piano than some sort of deranged xylophone, its not uncommon to hear "I never realised that my piano could sound like that". Tuning is just the petrol in the tank. There's a whole lot of other stuff that we can do to make the playing experience more pleasurable - and we can even get paid for it. As usual I've gone off topic again. Ron O. -- OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY Grand Piano Manufacturers _______________________ Web http://overspianos.com.au mailto:ron at overspianos.com.au _______________________
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