[pianotech] justify pitch raise

[reggaepass at aol.com]

Ryan,



Really, 20 cents, and you can get clean, stable unisons at pitch in one pass?  I am not able to do that.  In fact, I had been routinely pitch-raising home pianos that were substantially more than 4 cents off until I read in the PTG published pamphlet that the "standard" for when a pitch raise was needed was 8 cents.  I tried that a couple of times, with unsatisfactory results.  So I'm back to around 4 cents for home use and 2 cents for critical situations (concerts and recordings).  How do you do it?




Alan Eder

even if the piano is off by 20 cents I can get through it without an extra charge



-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Sowers <tunerryan at gmail.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 10:31 am
Subject: Re: [pianotech] justify pitch raise















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.20Often 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/a9cdbe27/attachment-0001.html>