David writes: >>I am contracted to a few major institutions who demand that their tuners do not use EDT's. They prefer the traditional method, as it, in their opinion, indicates an impression of a 'proper craftsman'.<< Do "they" have anything to compare it with, or are they simply going on outward appearances? If so, then the preference for aural tuning, in this case, is based on nothing to do with pianos. I would think it more likely that they had a bad experience with an ETD user that had little. This is not uncommon, that somebody wants a new job, buys a machine, and starts advertising themselves as a piano tuner. It poisoned the well for many others. If anybody wants to demonstrate the superiority of aural tuning vs. machine assisted tuning, put your money on the table and give me a call. Oh, wait, Jim Coleman and Virgil Smith already did this, and the crowd of tuners, listening critically, couldn't find a preference. >>My concern with their use, in the eyes of the public and the lay person, is that if it is fine to use ETD's, then perhaps the piano is slowly becoming out dated by the introduction of the digital instrument. (I refuse to call them pianos). More and more people are purchasing digitals, particularly as an introduction to music for their children. Is their use and popularity going to mean the demise of the family piano? << I think it far more likely that the piano use is down because of the costs involved in purchase and maintaining it. If there were no ETD's, there would be far fewer piano tuners out there, and their rates would be higher. So, ETD's may actually be helping the piano world justify the purchase of acoustic instruments. Also, they use ETD's for tuning pipe organs, and it hasn't been a problem. Regards, Ed Foote RPT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110127/d1085f5d/attachment.htm>
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