Probably me. This was the approach I took some years back when I was faced with a similar problem. I had (have) no problem tuning pianos to whatever pitch the artist/orchestra wanted as long as they were willing to pay for the extra work. I didn't think it was fair for them to expect me to absorb the cost nor did I think it fair to pass it on to the piano owner (the auditorium). Once we (I and the auditorium) adopted this policy it became a rare thing to tune to any pitch other than the Internationally recognized pitch standard of A=440 Hz. I took the same approach with requests for voicing changes that were (in my opinion) outside the norm. I would accommodate what I considered to be reasonable requests without comment. Some requests, however, would have required extensive lacquering and/or radical sanding to accommodate. When faced with the potential cost of replacing the hammers after their one-night performance the demands for radical voicing changes diminished substantially. "Artists" also tended to take more care in setting up and performing their "prepared" piano pieces when they realized--per a signed document--that they would be held financially responsible for any damage their "preparations" did to the auditorium's pianos. This approach saved everyone a lot of argument and misunderstanding. It was all fairly simple; we would accommodate any reasonable request without discussion but when the request cost the owner additional money (or had the potential for doing so) the financial obligation fell to the person or organization making the request. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Manufacturing Consultant 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA Phone 360.736.7563 Cell 360.388.6525 Fax 360.736.5239 <mailto:E-maildel at fandrichpiano.com> E-mail 1: del at fandrichpiano.com E-mail 2: <mailto:ddfandrich at gmail.com> ddfandrich at gmail.com _____ From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of RON MAY, RPT Sent: April 29, 2009 5:38 PM To: Pianotech Subject: [pianotech] CONCERT PITCH 440/442? . . . I thank sombody on this list that made this suggestion some time ago which we now use. I wrote a form letter from the Symphonic Association Piano Technician that merely states that, "We will be happy to tune the piano to A442 for you, however, This fine piano is maintained at A440 to satisfy the majority of the artists as well as the church. If you wish the piano tuned to A442 we will be happy to do so, however, it will require that the piano be retuned back to A440 immediately after the concert and we will have no choice but to charge you $500.00 for the several tunings it will take to bring it back to 440.. Since then we have had no problems---that is until about 2 weeks ago. We had an orchestra,(no pianist) coming in demanding a piano and for it to be tuned A442. When we informed them of our situation they said fine, we will bring our own piano which they did. It was some kind of an electric keyboard that I would bet was maybe 439. Ron May Vero Beach -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090429/5455bccd/attachment.html>
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