House, piano ... spotlessly clean. Except she said she couldn't get to the soundboard. Those pesky strings! I happened to have my handy-dandy set of Spurlock grand soundboard brooms/wipers (?) and offered to push the dirt around. Told her the soda straw trick and so forth. It was 5 minutes of work for a goooood client who had just purchased a DC system and Schaff's large wooden caster cups from me. So ... reasonable to do it, or not? Now touching up some unisons afterwards, I had not counted on. Add 15 minutes of "stupid time." But ya learn (hopefully). :-} Alan Barnard Salem, MO P.S. When seeing an older upright or console for the first time, inspecting the bridges, adjusting traps, etc. I generally do a little free cleaning for three reasons: 1. Self preservation ... cough, gick. 2. To be able to actually see bridge cracks, rust on string loops, etc. and 3. To get customer relations off to a good start. Time ... I dunno, maybe 15 minutes. No real options I can see on this one as there are plenty of tuners and tooners around who have been in these pianos and never cleaned them, maybe never inspected them. I still need to make regular customers out of every new call I get! Maybe others, with a bigger client base, can afford to say: "Madam, YUCK! I'll clean it for x-many $, otherwise, I'm outa here." But even people who are terrible housekeepers can be mortified with the junk in their pianos and it's better to make them happy than to insult them, says I. Well ... that's my $0.02, anyway. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com> To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 8:46 PM Subject: Re: Soundboard Cleaning was Re: And Now for SomethingCmpletelyDifferent, WAS Re:[OT Re:ULB;[Experts] What instrument is inside apiano? > Volunteer? Offer it? > > I generally get about one hour's wages for a good cleaning (may include strings and action cavity). You don't do this as a freebie, do you? > > Terry Farrell > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: <tune4u@earthlink.net> > To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org> > Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 9:05 PM > Subject: Soundboard Cleaning was Re: And Now for Something CmpletelyDifferent, WAS Re:[OT Re:ULB;[Experts] What instrument is inside a piano? > > > > If you volunteer to clean a grand soundboard, think to offer it and do it > > BEFORE you tune the piano. You may freely guess how I learned this little > > lesson. > > SNIP > _______________________________________________ > pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
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