> > Asking how long its been since their last tuning is really not a good question to ask - it assumes that if the piano was tuned within the past year or so that it may not require raising pitch, and thus sets the client up with an expectation that the cost may be lower than it will be. You can't possibly know by asking the "when" question who tuned the piano, whether they tuned it to pitch, whether the last tuning was the first in 20 years. In Western Washington I almost always find pianos worse after 6 months than a year - so it can really depend on the humidity conditions during the last tuning. Also, it can put the client on the defensive. Often they don't know or are embarrassed. Not a good idea. One other thing that does fit here is what constitutes a "serious" pitch raise. I've been reading for years here that anything beyond 2 cents off requires a pitch raise. If anyone is actually successfully enforcing that protocol, then they are spoiled beyond my wildest dreams by either perfect climate control, or customers rich and gullible enough to pay extra for pitch adjustments twice a year. I doubt that in the 30+ years I've been doing this, I've tuned more than a couple of pianos that were within 2 cents. In school systems, particularly, rarely less than 20 cents off (at least in places) twice a year. So like with everything else, there's no simple answer. Ron N Good point, Ron. The fact is, if I'm following my own work and it's a regular client, even if the piano is off by 20 cents I can get through it without an extra charge. This would be a great opportunity to talk to the client about Dampp-chasers. We let people know that we can spend more time servicing the whole instrument if we don't have to spend as much time tuning and retuning the piano. -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090403/3be0ef3d/attachment.html>
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