<HTML>In a message dated 9/16/01 11:15:25 AM Central Daylight Time, dnereson@dimensional.com (Dave Nereson) writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">>She had been bugged all day that "her piano wasn't holding its tune" and all it was was an inexperienced player playing the wrong notes of an F chord. < Yes, I had a beginning piano student customer who, after I was done tuning, remarked that the piano sounded beautiful.  Later that day, she called to leave a message that it had "gone out of tune already and nothing sounds right".  I drove 15 miles back to her house, only to end up showing her that middle C is immediately to the left of two, not three black keys.  She moved her hand down two whole steps and all was well.   Shoulda charged mileage, but just chalked it up as a good-will gesture to keep her as a customer. </BLOCKQUOTE> I had the very same thing happen to me once.  Quite often, actually, it is the rank beginner who suspects something is wrong with the piano when they hear normal mechanical noise or uneven tone due to scaling compromises.  Sometimes, a piano, very much out of tune seems strange when it is played after a major pitch raise and fine tuning. Trying to explain that a piano is made a certain way purposefully may only bring objections such as "Why would a manufacturer make a piano sound like *that*!?"  Regrettably, it seems that it is some of the new immigrants that are the most doubting and suspicious.  There was once a man with a thick Polish accent who just could not accept my explanation of why his brand new Baldwin Console's note G2 had such a bright and brassy sound to it.  My attempt at voicing it only made him more suspicious.  He finally ordered me to "get out!" of his house.  He added, "You can't tell me that Baldwin would deliberately make a piano have this kind of sound!" I recall a hard working, large and loving Vietnamese family whose children had learned to play advanced repertoire on a severely off pitch and radically out of tune Acrosonic.  A customer of mine who had befriended the family paid to have me do a half day job of not only pitch raise but hammer filing, complete cleaning, action tightening and regulation.  When the oldest girl sat down to play, she immediately expressed the kind of horror and disbelief that we all did last Tuesday at the shocking difference I had made in the piano.  They sold that piano a few months later and moved to California. This even happened with my own younger brother.  He, in spite of higher levels of education than I or any of the rest of my siblings, has never done well financially.  An old grand was given to him.  I knew it was in disrepair and dreaded the experience of having to go to his house on one of my trips to California to "tune" it.  I finally did so after he had kept it and played it as it was for a few years.  After about 3 hours of tuning and repair, I announced that I was finished.  He sat down to play and after a few chords, looked up at me in disappointment and said, "It doesn't sound the *same*!". One analogy I often use (but which does not always apply) is that of getting one's eyeglass prescription changed.  It has happened to me often.  I had come to realize that I had not been seeing well and could see the improvement being made by the Optometrist changing the lenses and thus making the letters on the eye chart clearer.  But the first time I would put on the new glasses, everything seemed just a bit too starkly clear.  I had grown accustomed to the "soft focus" everything had to it.  But just as the Optometrist explained, I would and did quickly adapt to the new perception.  This, I suggest is a good way of explaining things to a customer who is shocked by the way a piano sounds at first when it has had a radical pitch raise. One very difficult situation arises when the customer says the Piano Teacher claims it is not right.  You may as well kiss that one good-bye.  The experience I had with the customer playing the wrong keys was tough.  It was in the student housing neighborhood.  It was a family of Japanese who had strict customs.  I had to remove my shoes before entering their living space.  The young woman did not speak, only brought her hands together, bowed and then played F-G-A-B, then rose again, put her hands together and bowed politely. I did not get what she was trying to convey at first until her husband finally spoke in a stern but heavily accented voice, "My wife say you tune piano wrong!".  I ultimately guessed that she was confused as to where Middle C is, showed her what C-D-E-F sounds like, then showed her that an analogous sound could be made by playing F-G-A-Bb.  There were sounds of "Oh" and muttering in Japanese by all who were present (at the Inquisition). I was told, "Thank You" by the man of the house and shown the door as the wife handed me my shoes.  I didn't dare try to charge for the service call and never heard from them again. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin</HTML>