Different Cultures/Foreign Techs.

[Les Smith]

On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, Lance Lafargue wrote:

> This past week I've tuned/worked for three Russians, a Greek, and two
> Oriental customers.  One of My Russian customers (a teacher) told me the I
> needed to go back and check the tuning on her student's piano (one of the
> other Russians) because chords were not clear and sounded terrible in the
> unison bass section before the break. The PSO in question is a new
> Wurlitzer spinet.  The owner was already leery about my services because I
> charged her more than she thought I would ($80 for a 40 cent pitch raise
> plus adjustments and cabinet touch-up) and I was only there for a total of
> two hours.  She also commented (to the teacher) that Russian technicians
> took three hours and charged much less.  

Hi, Lance.

I am answering this question in as forthright a manner as I can, based
upon my personal experience with a couple of Russian technicians. It
certainly doesn't reflect on ALL Russian techs, but the two I knew were
alike enough that it probably reflects on a lot of them. Both were well-
established techs back in Russia and had been tuning for many years. The
one I will comment on was the best of the two. He was a principal tuner
for one of the largest and best known orchestras in the old Soviet Union.
No, I'm NOT mentioning any names. They SAY thast the old KGB has been
disbanded, but you never know. Let's call the mystery tuner "Boris".

I personally saw "Boris" tune and regulate many pianos over a fairly
extended period of time. The first thing I noticed right off the bat
was that he never used a tuning fork. When I asked him about this he
would point to his ear and explain "It's in here". I took that to mean
that that's where he normally carried his fork and that the last time
he put it there it had gone so far in that he had been unable to re-
trieve it. Talk about relative pitch. +/_ 25 cents seemed to be good
enough. I don't think I ever saw a piano dead on pitch.

In  Russia they must have a tuner's union that says that they must
charge by the hour and that they can only tune one string per minute.
2 1/2 hours, OR MORE was not uncommon for a tuning. Now there's nothing
necessarily wrong about being slow. I would certainly rather see some-
one who is slow and GOOD, rather than someone who is fast and not. HOW-
EVER, slow AND poorjust doesn't cut it. Not at all. Further, the concept
of setting a pin or string seemed beyond his understanding. He told me
that that was not the way he had been taught. Maybe Russian pianos are
different, but he told me that the Orchestra he worked for owned a large
number of Hamburg Steinways, too. You have to understand, too, that back
home he was something of a "big-cheese" tuner  or  he  wouldn't have
found it so easy to immigrate to the states. Puzzling, to say the least.

His regulation work was as slow and of the same quality as his tuning
work. The other Russian tuner I knew was a virtual carbon-copy of Boris.

Where the problem may come in with Russian customers is that if they have
been exposed to tuners like Boris at home, they have been brain-washed
into thinking that a "good" tuning MUST take three hours because that's
how long it took HIM. I think it's a matter of the owner mistakenly
equating how much time a tuner spends with a piano, with the quality
of the tuning. In other words, the guy who spends three hours tuning
a piano MUST be doing a better job than the guy who  does it in an
hour. Ditto for regulation and voicing work, too. If this perception
is correct, you're NEVER going to please these customers. You're go-
ing to leave them feeling that you just overcharged for a "quickie",
and the only way they're going to be satisfied is if they can call you
with a complaint and then you go back and then do some additional work
for "free". WHEN YOU GO BACK AND DON'T CHARGE, YOU ARE, IN EFFECT,
ADMITTTING THAT YOU DIDN'T DO THE JOB RIGHT THE FIRST TIME AND JUST
REINFORCING THEIR SUSPICIONS! You don't need customers like that. No   
one does, except "Boris". When you run into such people, I suggest that
you just give them the name of another tuner ( NOT ME!) and move on.  
Don't look back!

Les Smith
lessmith@buffnet.net