myths

[David Nereson]

I have been putting together a brochure to hand out to
my customers
called "Common Myths About Pianos"

Please take a look at it at
www.angelfire.com/biz6/afinetune/myths.html

If you have any more myths I should consider adding to
the list, let me know.

Any other positive suggestions will be considered.

Wally Scherer


 Others I'm sure everyone hears now and then:

Because their piano hasn't been tuned in many years, some people will ask
me, "Is there any hope?", "Can it be salvaged?", etc.  I check the piano
and there's often very little wrong with it except being slightly flat.
Sometimes it's right on pitch, even though a bit out of tune with itself,
and the owner will swear it sounds horrendous and that I'll probably have
several hours of work to do.
Other times, it does sound horrendous, but the owner thinks only a couple
notes need to be "touched up."

Some owners will say, "Well, nobody's played it in years, so it's probably
a wreck."  (They think playing it helps keep it in tune.)

Then there's the belief that in order to be tuned, verticals must be moved
out from the wall.  Why is this (other than moving it out an inch or two,
so as not to scratch the wall or the back of the lid when opening it)?

Kids banging  the piano made it go out of tune.  Well, maybe a little, but
little kids usually can't hit the keys any harder than a concert artist
playing fortississimo (fff), unless they're using a hammer or something.

And the all-too-common belief that if other people in the room can hear
notes being played, despite vacuum cleaners running, people talking
loudly, the TV blasting, etc., then the tuner must also be able to hear
well enough to tune.  I asked one lady to turn down the TV and to get her
screaming kids to move to another room, and she said, "Well, I can hear it
just fine."

The belief that tuning cures all, and includes cleaning, repairs,
regulation, voicing.

The complete mental block against accepting the fact that humidity changes
are the main thing that makes a piano go out of tune.  They want to
believe it's from  moving, temperature changes, not being played, kids
banging on it, construction/remodeling being done in the house, but no
matter how much you try to drill into them that it's changes in humidity
that make it go out of tune, it just never sinks in.

RE:  sunlight and ivories. (non-myth) As I understand it, the term
"bleachers" for football and baseball field seating comes from the
similar-looking racks for bleaching ivories that lined the windows of the
ivory processing factories in Ivoryton, Connecticut, where a huge
percentage of the ivories for American pianos in the 19th and early 20th
centuries was handled.  There was an excellent PTG Journal article on them
several years ago.  The ivories were arranged in racks facing the sun,
which helped bleach them white.

--David Nereson, RPT