Piano 'detuning'

[DON PRICE]

Chris  -
I had a customer kind of like yours a few years ago.    I did a pitch raise
and spent a good deal of time getting it to sound good.  (I thought!)
However, the customer was very disappointed, and he let me know that was not
what he expected or wanted .  He wanted the piano to sound like those he
listened to in the bars in Central City.

Well!!  I could handle  that.   And the customer is always right.   (He
still had the money!)  So I went through and destroyed all those nice
sounding unisons I had worked so hard to do just right.     IT WAS JUST WHAT
HE WANTED.

dcp@sosinc.net
Don Price
816 Vickie
Ft. Morgan  CO 80701
-----Original Message-----
From: ChrisRis@AOL.COM <ChrisRis@AOL.COM>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 1:33 AM
Subject: Piano 'detuning'


>Greetings,
>
>I have a dingbat of a customer with a Steinway upright from the teens who
>claims to be a 'wizard of interpretation' and to play the 'tone' of the
>piano, 'unlike most professionals'.  She hasn't tuned her piano in 12 years
>and the action was so frozen and out of regulation that it was impossible.
>Did the usual, file the hammers, adjust let off and blow, protek the
action,
>teflon the butt leathers, voila, plays great.  Unfortuneatley, it's no
longer
>the piano she loved.  It seems it has lost it's unique voice that she
>preferred over any other piano she has heard, the best included.
>
>She mentioned today that Liszt 'preferred' his pianos out of tune - found
>them more inspiring - and it brought to mind a story I heard 30 years ago
>about an itinerant 'toner' that followed along behind the itinerant tuner.
>She - that's how the story goes - would slightly detune 1 string of a
unison,
>restoring the charm and strength of voice of the instrument that somehow
was
>lost in the tuning!
>
>Has anyone EVER heard of this???  I'm actually thinking of trying it on
her;
>she's crazy enough to love it!!!
>
>Christopher Ris
>
>PS  About 6 months ago I heard a snippet of a piano piece that was prepared
>like this, but out of tune enough the have that 'honky tonk' sound.
>
>
>
>I'm