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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Don't think of what you have to do to make your
customer happy, think of what you must do to keep her from becoming an
unhappy customer who is potentially a very damaging liability to your
reputation. One unhappy customer can undo the good created by many happy
customers.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You might want to bite the bullet and replace the
bass damper felts. If you are getting sympathetic leakage in the bass,
this could solve the problem. The bass damper felt may be overly
dense and not doing a very good job even though they seem to dampen ok when
played as individual notes.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=welltemperedtuning@yahoo.com
href="mailto:welltemperedtuning@yahoo.com">Geoffrey Arnold</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=pianotech@ptg.org
href="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:38
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Client Care and Spinnet Dampers:
HELP!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif">
<DIV><BR>Hi All,<BR><BR>Well it's deja vu for me. I thought I'd learned my
lesson the last time this happened. I get a call for a tuning and "pedal
repair". When I arrive the damper pedal rod is engaged but the pedal regulated
with so much play as never to reach damper lift. Easy fix, regulate pedal,
achieve damper lift. I then suddenly notice copious bleedthrough. I point out
the "echo" to the customer and say the dampers are old and misaligned, and
another technician must have sacrificed pedal play for quieting the
bleedthrough. I would leave it with pedal play, but if the "echo" bothered her
I would come back free of charge and try to minimize it.<BR><BR>She does call,
and I do return. This time I back the pedal all the way to where it was when I
first met the piano. At this point I have not touched a single damper head, or
damper wire. The damper lift rod is miles from any damper lever, so all
dampers are seated.And still the massive echo. I neglected to play the piano
before regulating the pedal on my very first visit, so I don't recall if it
had the bleedthrough then. But intellectually I know, tuning the piano as I
did, and pedal regulation could not have caused this pervasive damper
bleeding. I try to delicately approach the issue, essentially inquiring "are
you sure this echo wasn't there before"... "no, I DEFINITELY would have
noticed it, I can't even play it" and the implied "what did you do to my
piano!".... <BR>The one previous time I reached this kind of exchange I
stubbornly stuck to my intellectual conclusion that anything I could have done
during tuning would not have affected the dampers this much, and if the client
wants to remedy the ailing dampers I would be happy to help but they'll have
to pay for it. Now I am hopefully a little wiser, and would like to keep my
customers so I said "don't worry, this is my problem not yours, I'm not done
here until the problem is fixed..."<BR><BR>Three hours later (of second visit
to house), every damper is seated. When I push each string, the damper
follows, showing me that it is bearing against the string, and there is
sufficient tension if the damper head follows. I strengthened each damper
spring in the bass and low tenor for good measure, requiring that I remove the
spinnet action, which is so much fun. I even tried needling a few offensive
dampers. This is a Baldwin Spinnet from the 60s. The dampers are a little
compacted, but nothing spilled on them, and not too hard or ratty. The real
killer is that with a slow chromatic check, no single note rings noticeably
(play a note, press hand against string, no change in echo). Laying a forearm
across all the strings in tenor does not change the echo. Nor a forearm across
bass, unless you really push, and then the echo does die. This for me is to
assess if it is indeed string noise, or soundboard/backscale noise, but its so
loud it must be string noise. If I play a forte f-major in the tenor, and arm
mute it, the echo sings loud. If I play same chord and arm mute the bass,
lower than the notes I played, it does significantly dampen the echo. This is
why I focused primarily on bass dampers. One or two of which I found mildly
offensive, but all at least dampen adequately.<BR><BR>I would like advice on
good upright damping. But also on this customer quandary, when you reach a
juncture where you as the technician feel certain the piano has a chronic
ailment that predated your ever meeting it, and the client feeling you caused
categorical damper failure just by tuning. Of course now, I have removed the
action, and replaced it, and bent many damper wires, so now my actions really
could have "caused" or at least worsened the problem (although I did so
methodically and with the intention of improving the symptoms) I can no longer
say, I never touched the dampers, not my fault. How much free time to I give
here, for a happy customer? How does one establish professional expertise and
trust, without saying "its not my fault, so not my problem"?<BR><BR><BR>Thank
you tuner support group!<BR><BR>Greg Arnold<BR><SPAN><A
href="http://www.welltemperedtuning.com"
target=_blank>www.welltemperedtuning.com</A></SPAN><BR></DIV></DIV><BR>
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