I have heard _the sound_

[Kent Swafford]

About 10 months ago I tuned a Julius Bach spinet approximately 25 years 
old; the tuning was uneventful except that I had to shim one tuning pin 
before the one pin would hold.  I was called to tune the piano again this 
morning.  The piano had been moved from its position of last year to a 
new position in the same room, the owner saying he was hoping that the 
piano would stay in tune better in its new position.  I found the bass 
and treble sections to be at pitch; the mid-range was noticeably flat 
making the piano sound poor.  I did one rough-tuning pass, during which 
the piano seemed to hold.  I had noticed during the first pass that the 
second unison on the tenor bridge (C#3?) was unusually flat.  During the 
second pass the C#3 seemed to hold, but as I tuned up into octave 4, I 
heard _the sound_.  The customer was in the back yard outside the house 
and claimed to have heard _the sound_ from there.  One of the strings of 
C#3 had "broken" and when I investigated, I found a break in the plate 
below the tenor end of the long bridge.  The break went through a hitch 
pin hole, releasing the hitch pin and one string of C#3.  I suspect that 
had I investigated when I originally found C#3 quite flat, I would have 
found a crack in the plate.  But because the tuning pin that I had 
shimmed was in the unison a half-step above, I thought nothing of finding 
flat notes in the area.  I'm not sure what I would have done, had I found 
a crack.  Since the piano is not valuable and would not be worth any 
substantial repair work, perhaps I would have been asked to continue the 
tuning and hope for the best.

May you never hear _the sound_.

Kent Swafford