When is it enough?

[btrout@desupernet.net]

Hi Avery,

I appreciate your advice to Karen to increase her speed.  That is a hard thing to
do, especially when you're new at it.  And you're right, working at a dealership
can get you Tons of experience very quickly.

On the flip side of the coin, one can tune too quickly, especially where the
customer is capable of hearing whether you tuned a decent temperment, and whether
the unisons go out of tune as quickly as the tuner goes out the front door.  I've
met quite a few now who may not know what a 'temperment' is, but they sure know it
if theirs is mis-tuned!

Forgive me if I seem a little tender on this point.  I work for a dealership.  We
have a tuner there who regularly tunes 5 to 7 pianos a day, rarely taking a full
hour to tune one. (In customer's homes.)  I get frustrated when I have to go out
and retune some those pianos (at no charge to the customer, but it's still a
pain!) because the 'previous' tuner did a 'rush job' and now it doesn't sound so
good. (And it was just done yesterday. Or it "sounded better before it was
tuned!")

In all fairness, I'm probably one of the slow tuners too.  But I'm learning to
evaluate what instruments are worthy of spending more time on, and which ones
won't 'take' a decent tune no matter what you do to them.  I'll gladly spend as
much as two hours on a piano if by doing so, it will result in a remarkably well
tuned instrument.  But unfortunately, most of the Kohler & Campbells I've seen...
well they just weren't worth it.

Again, I appreciate your thoughts.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Brian Trout
Quarryville, Pa.



Avery Todd wrote:

>    However, the most important advice I can give you is to increase your
> speed. I was fortunate in my early learning stage, to get work at a busy
> Baldwin dealer where there were always pianos which needed tuning. And a
> LOT of them needed a pitch raise or lowering job on them.