Elton John

[Phil Bondi]

> >Someone with a big name (Elton John,Bruce Hornsby,Billy Joel, etc.)  touring
> >as a pianist with a band will probably be carrying their own piano & their
> >own tech.
> >
..not Bruce Hornsby - I've tuned for him twice in the last 12 months - have yet
to meet him.

If you get a call to tune his piano while he's on the road, his 'tech
director/tour manager' has a RCT with him - real nice guy..we spoke for about 30
minutes after I got done with the piano this last time around - he was asking
alot of questions about the RCT that I just didn't know, because I don't own
one - he did notice the SAT in my tool case and was inquisitive about it...I
demonstrated a couple of things about it, and then he went to work on me(tongue
in cheek!)...

He was asking about Stretch numbers and preferences of technicians in general of
'how far' they like to stretch..I had just finished an aural tuning on the SD-10
that Bruce was going to be playing on - this person wanted to see where my
stretch was - so he measured the A's and got his numbers and concluded that I had
tuned the piano to a moderate stretch, which is where he liked Bruce's pianos to
be(I got lucky!).

I made sure he understood that because one has the tools(RCT) to do a good job,
there's more to tuning a piano than getting the dot 'blush' or making the lights
stop..as I was explaining setting a pin and settling a string, I could tell he
had never heard of those things before.

boys and their toys...!!!

Rook