Tom Cole wrote: > Patricia Neely wrote: > > > > List > > A customer called to have his piano tuned but said the last tuner would not > > bring it to A 440 How do you determine at what pitch you tune and which > > pianos should not be tuned at A-440. Thank you for your help. Pat Neely This is always going to be to some degree a judgement call that will vary from tech to tech, and I rarely find ground to question another techs call. As a general rule, I will tune to 440 anytime I feel like a piano will take and hold the tuning. Of course I inform the customer of any extra costs involved before getting started. Specifically I look at string breakage risk, and tuning pin tightness. Additionally one might observe structural deficiencies that may prohibit any attempt at tuning at all ie.. cracked plates, severe damage to soundboards or bridges and the like. One thing to remember in all this is that not all pianos that are tuneable were built for A440. We all run into pianos that were built way before concert pitch was higher then 435, and sometimes its a good idea to think about this when deciding what pitch use. In such cases I like to ask whether or not they will use the piano together with fixed pitch instruments before deciding on pitch to tune at. -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway
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