The Complete Technician (was Europe vs. USA)

[Barb Barasa]

Re: the discussion of making voicing/regulating an integral part of service.

Do you guys (that includes Barbara and Mary) get into this spiel with every
customer, or only select ones?  I do almost entirely in-the-home tunings.
When they call and I ask them how long it's been since the piano was tuned,
and they can't remember how many years, it kind of makes me suspect that
they are reluctant to part with the money for a tuning and that it would be
ludicrous to suggest that they invest in regulating and voicing.  Or am I
shooting myself in the foot by making this assumption??

I would love to practice my extremely limited voicing skills on old Cable
spinets instead of jumping right into a Steinway grand, but are these folks
really going to go for this??  If a piano is just too out of whack for me to
stand, I will make a few adjustments just to get the hammers to stop
bobbling, etc., but find it hard to believe that the average person will pay
for a real regulation.

I should add that I used to have a lot of customers in the Chicago suburbs
and many of them could have afforded this work.  But now most of my
customers are in a rural/college town area.  They are not mostly destitute,
but most do not seem to have their pianos as a high priority in their budgets.

Do you also notice that piano teachers are the WORST when it comes to
maintaining their pianos?

Barb Barasa
Sycamore IL