<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> On 5/15/2012 8:15 AM, Euphonious Thumpe wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:1337094929.61481.YahooMailNeo@web114717.mail.gq1.yahoo.com" type="cite">    Almost every piano made when he lived was made with a "God is watching us" type ethos of craftsmanship. ( Which we see in nearly all 1880-1915 era pianos, and just about everything else made then.) While I agree we should strive to do the best job possible, is it really worth risking one's sanity on some truly awful specimen? (A "Grand" brand spinet comes to mind, along with some of the worst Kimballs.) So cheaply made that it severely twists with each pass of the pins??? I'd rather save my sanity and tell the customer the piano will only sound so-so, regardless of how much of my life-force I expend on it, charge them accordingly, and offer to help them find a better one.</blockquote> I totally agree about the level of work found in pianos from this era. And I agree for the most part with realistic talk to the owner, and with the idea of helping them find a better piano. The exception, I feel, is for owners who can't possibly afford any better piano, and/or consider buying their little worn out Currier spinet to be the fulfillment of a life-long previously frustrated desire. There are a few people out there like that, who have wanted a piano since childhood, and at age 50, this is the one they could manage to get. They can bond deeply to whatever piano they acquired, and I never want to ruin their enjoyment of it by sneering at it. "First do no harm." I keep seeing talk of "losing one's sanity" doing this or that. While it's a striking phrase, when it comes to tuning a Grand spinet (aka "artist console" via decal on the front, so I called it "lying bastard") I don't feel that tuning such a little lump of misery to the maximum (but nearly microscopic) level it is willing to accept in any way threatens anyone's mental health. It's just a matter of fiddling with the compromises available, and judging which feels the least objectionable today. One knows it's going to end up horrible; but one also knows it will be nowhere near as horrible as it was when one arrived. What is stressful about this? Stress comes from a lack of skill or from trying to impose impossible standards, or from being caught in between two people with authority who demand conflicting things. A waitress, trapped between a stubborn cook and a customer making unrealistic demands is in a stressful job. But tuning a crummy little piano? We know what to do with such beasties, and we just do the best we can, pouring in a reasonable amount of work and concern. (After all, the piano may be junky but the owner isn't.) What we get is what we get. We keep trying to tune it a little better, knowing about where the limits are, and knowing that we can't spend five hours on one of the things. Who me, worry? Ted Sambell once read a little sentence, probably from Britain, where someone talked about excellent piano tuning requiring a nervous sensitivity bordering on neurasthenia. He and the class had a good guffaw about that idea. But here it comes around showing its ridiculous head again, asking to be taken seriously. To grotesquely paraphrase Shakespeare, people have ended up in padded rooms wearing straitjackets -- but not from tuning pianos. sssssssssssssssssssnnnn </body> </html>