[pianotech] How long do unisons hold?

[Terry Farrell]

Gee whizzzz, seems my unison tuning took a nose-dive a while back.  
When was it this guy moved to Florida? And where in Florida?

Terry Farrell,  in..........Florida!   ;-)

On Mar 9, 2010, at 4:10 PM, Dean May wrote:

> Early in my career I tuned for a restaurant that featured a locally  
> well
> known pianist. The guy was pretty good, but he could hammer the  
> piano. It
> was a really small Kawai grand, don't remember the model. There was  
> usually
> one or two broken strings when I came out and evidence of a couple  
> dozen
> others that had been replaced by the previous tech. I had lots of  
> complaints
> from him of unisons not holding. Trouble was I was new to the  
> business and
> little uncertain of myself. For a given unison that was out it was
> impossible to distinguish if the problem was me, a previously broken  
> string,
> the physics of this particular model piano (which I've since learned  
> is
> problematic), his hard playing, or his attempt to touch up the  
> unison with
> his own hammer that he kept under the music desk. It was a harmonic
> convergence of unison instability conspiracy on steroids.
>
> I was smart enough to realize all these factors were in play. Couple  
> it to
> the fact the guy was something of an ass and the restaurant owner just
> wanted the complaints to go away. Plus I was hungry for business and  
> did not
> want to lose this account. So I took it as a personal challenge to  
> get the
> darn unisons as stable as I could. I also made a habit of doing a  
> follow up
> 2 or 3 times between tunings to touch up unisons which the owner  
> really
> appreciated. Sure I lost money, but my unison tuning did get better.  
> And
> I've made thousands of dollars from this account over the years with  
> regular
> tuning appointments- probably around 50 tunings total.
>
> The pianist eventually moved to Florida and the restaurant got a  
> different
> piano. No more unison problems.
>
> Dean
>
> Dean W May