Congrats on your RPT status, Joe. No doubt everyone on this list has a minimum of one story about these units. I know several from various colleagues, but will only share mine at the moment. The late George Defebaugh once asked me about my tuning abilities; iow, whether I felt confident and comfortable with tuning. I admitted that generally, yes, I felt I had reached a certain plateau in my skills for the time I'd been in the business. I then thought for a moment, and confessed that there was one piano where I didn't like the results (tuners are often their own worst critics), and figured that since it was the last call of the day, I must either be fatigued or was just doing something wrong. That was the only piano that I intentionally didn't charge for the tuning. I felt I didn't deserve to be paid. [Free tunings and getting paid are for another day.] Guess what piano it was? When George heard this, he chuckled and said, "In that case, don't worry about it -- nobody can tune those to any degree of satisfaction". He also advised me to always charge for my work! In keeping with the other responses so far, I was an RPT at the time (or whatever we were known as that week), tune verticals left-handed, and observe Lew Herwig's "bottom of the hole" method for tuning verticals. I also knew about "flag-poling", bridge roll, and other phenomena. The combination of knowing about and/practicing certain methods didn't help. Funny thing is, -as- I was tuning, my tests and checks were working out. The finished product was dog--meat. I feel that today I could do... better, but in the 30-plus years since the above scenario, I've never had the [opportunity] to find out. Sometimes life cuts you a break. If there's any real help in this reply, it's to not let the anomalies of one piano/scale get to you, especially to the point of discouraging your continued growth and learning curve. Okay, one more thrid-person story. You took a break -- this guy spent four hours, then came back the next day before giving up. We're not only our own worst critics, sometimes we're our own worst enemies! <div>On 8/15/07, Joe Wiencek <<a href="mailto:jwpiano@earthlink.net">jwpiano@earthlink.net</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> List, I'm a recent RPT and caut.   Today I was forced to take a break while tuning a Steinway Model 45 piano due to the squirminess of the pitch. Can anyone suggest a plan of attack on these particular (or any Steinway upright) that makes for an efficient tuning session? Thanks, Joe </blockquote></div> -- Jim Harvey, RPT <<a href="mailto:harvey.pianotech@gmail.com">harvey.pianotech@gmail.com</a>> <<a href="http://www.harveypiano.com">www.harveypiano.com</a>>