<HTML>A little whin= e with dinner, Yes, it's a free country.  Anyone can hang out a shingle and fish f= or business as a  "Toona."   I got a call about a hanging damper on a relatively new RX3 Kawai from a= dealer.  I said that I'd go check it out.  I got the number of th= e customer, and it's a good hour drive to her house.  I asked her if sh= e'd had the piano tuned recently.  She said, "yes, but he says he doesn= 't do any of the mechanical stuff." A hanging damper?  C'mon... She said she was happy with his tuning, but she needed the damper fixed.=  Okay, I made the appointment, went out today and burnished a couple o= f tight guide rail bushings with teflon powder, then played the piano a bit = to make sure everything was sound,which it was.   Sounded pretty bad, though, considering the three-week-old tuning. &nbsp= ;I played a particularly gnarly bass octave for the lady and asked her if it= sounded in tune.  "No," she said.  I re-tuned the bass(on princip= al, and in hopes of getting her biz in the future), then did a Tunelab check= of the temperament.  The previous guy apparently asked her if she want= ed a jazz, classical, or folk type temperament.  I was a bit curious af= ter a thirds test revealed no proximity to ET. Tunelab wasn't kind to the man's work.  Not only was there no speci= fic plan in the temperament, it was on the average about 9 cents flat. &nbsp= ;"He said there would be some slippage, and he guarantees his work for 30 da= ys..." said the nice lady.  I was doing a good job of refraining from n= egative comments, but it was a challenge.  She then said that "he doesn= 't really like this piano, mostly because of the plastic in the action." &nb= sp;And he doesn't like the modern generation of tuners who can "only tune by= machine, and don't use their ears." Oh well.   He's only been in biz for 25 years.   Dave Stahl </HTML>