<html> At 12:27 AM 1/21/2006 -0600, Barbara wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Come to think of it, tuning <for me> is the necessary drudge work; voicing, regulating, etc. is the fun stuff.   </blockquote> I'm the opposite -- I like tuning, and especially I like hearing a good pianist playing on my freshly tuned piano. That has always given me a real charge. I like the voicing because of the results, and because so many times it is so desperately needed and so seldom done. It often goes quickly, as well. It should, most of the time. Either the piano is a concert instrument, and has been kept up, in which case it should just have a little balancing and sweetening, or it is worn out and neglected and very bad; at that point, more drastic but faster techniques like alcohol and shoulder squeezing are appropriate. One doesn't need to walk on eggs when the hammers are totally shot already. I like the results of regulating, travelling, spacing, etc., but not the process particularly. I take it philosophically. It has to be done, etc. It is satisfying when all the filth is gone, and the action has clean underwear, and everything is solid and spaced and smooth and traveled and moves uniformly -- but it takes so darned long! It is a pleasure when one has repinned an action, and one regulates the springs to match, and it plays almost like new again. Only it takes an awful lot of time to get there. I still enjoy hearing the intervals come in and the unisons shape themselves, and the octaves stretch their stretch. Sort of tactile, plastic, three-dimensional. Susan </html>