Hi Brian, Nice to see you back, I remember meeting you at a convention, although I can't remember which one. Was it Arlington? John Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian Trout To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 10:11 PM Subject: [pianotech] My first piano tuning following retirement... (long post) Greetings, I've been reading through the archives and see that there are still quite a few familiar names posting, plus quite a few I didn't recognize. It's been a while since I've had anything to do with pianos. Hurricane Katrina came and went, another occupation came and went and just this week, I found myself dusting off the old piano tools again. I found a couple of the threads in the archives to be quite interesting reading. One was about whether to raise prices? Or lower prices? ... thinking of the economic downturn. One was talking about how long it takes to tune a piano. Plus fun stuff like whether it makes a hoot's worth of difference just how many times that string gets wrapped around the bloomin' tuning pin. LOL!! And, the one that got me to actually resubscribe to the list again, the one that talked about a church member being a "tooner" and stealing some RPT's customer. That pushed my buttons!! Wanna know why I dusted off the old tuning hammer and tuned my first piano in a very long time? Here's what happened. I've been attending this church for maybe 6 months. And on occasion, I have to play it. They had an evangelistic series and at the beginning and end of it, I was drafted as one of the musicians. Most thought I was part of the paid group that does such when the evangelistic groups come to town. Nope, sorry. Just happened to be playing at the right time and someone heard it that cared. I complained that the piano needed tuned. And the curch was very quick to make sure it got done right away. Tuner came. Tuner spent his "quality 45 minutes". Tuner left. Crappy tuning. I'm sorry, but it was pretty bad. I tuned for most of the 1990s working in a large piano store and had I done what this guy had done, I'd have been invited to retune it on my own time, and don't expect to get paid for it. I worried about it for quite some time thinking that it was one of the members that had done the tuning. I went so far as to look up the names of PTG members in the area. I even asked one of the list members that lives several hours drive away if they may know someone in this area that can tune a piano well. They did not, but suggested I find an RPT and go for it. What I found out was that it WAS an RPT that did the tuning in question (fortunately, NOT a church member). And it just so happens that they're the only one in this area. I was told that it took them about 45 minutes to tune and that they charged $65 to do it. Ok, I'll admit, I never was the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to FAST tunings. And I never got a GOOD concert level tuning down to less than about an hour and a half at best. There may be some of you guys who can do it, and my hat is off to you. But I'm not, and this RPT "tooner" isn't either. My first thoughts when putting the two things together... 45 minutes / $65 ... was why couldn't this person have charged $100 (or whatever) and really given a good, QUALITY tuning? I'd have been happy to pay for it myself. I'm serious. I'd have been glad to pay someone $100 for a really good tuning, maybe even a little more. (Ok, I'm lazy, I didn't want to do it. But I felt like I had to if I was going to get what I wanted.) Speed is a wonderful thing for a tuner. And that might be the price that prevails in this area, I don't know. But as what some would call a "professional" piano player, I do demand that the top octave actually be tuned, because, yes, I DO use EVERY SINGLE NOTE on that keyboard and no, it is not ok for C8 to be 1 full step sharp "cause nobody every uses it anyway" or "nobody can hear up that high anyway". (Incidentally, one... and only one... of the C8 strings was almost a full step sharp when they left.) I will say that it was not an easy piano to tune. It was something around a 6' Kawai, which I would have normally thought of as a good instrument. But a close look did suggest that bridge notching left a lot to be desired. So there were quite a few unisons that were challenging and it's not as "clean" of a sound as I'd have liked. But it is WAY above what it was after the RPT left. I'm not trying to pick on anyone with an RPT title or anyone who's fast. But I thought maybe a little perspective from someone who hasn't been around in a while might be of interest. I don't know if I'll continue to do more tuning (or other??) work. Maybe. Haven't really decided yet. But if I do, I will be thinking along the lines of rejoining the guild and will try to raise the bar rather than lower it. I know I'm not perfect, but the aspirations toward mediocrity in modern society drive me nuts!! End rant... :-) Hope all are well. Brian Trout ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091218/4738e2b6/attachment-0001.htm>
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