<HTML>TP, You get one of these occasionally, and you hope they never call again. &= nbsp;Unlike your customer, the people I get who are so picky usually DON'T p= lay the piano a lick, they just go up and down the keyboard one firmly-struc= k note at a time, with one ear cocked to the piano.  Because they don't= play or understand pianos a lick(usually), the problem is not well articula= ted.   Solving problems that actually exist can be difficult enough.  Then= you get the exasperation of phantom noises.  My sympathies! Dave Stahl In a message dated 2/6/04 5:06:14 PM Pacific Standard Time, Topperpiano= @aol.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Just thought I'd vent on a most perplexing service call today.  Las= t week I went to do a trouble shooting call for a local dealer.  The cu= stomer, who is a very accomplished pianist, had purchased a new very expensi= ve piano.  The customer only spoke very limited English.  Other th= an a few slightly wobbly unisons there was nothing really wrong with the pia= no.  The piano had been nicely prepped, was well regulated and voiced e= venly.  Last week I spent over an hour with the customer and could not = discern one iota of what her complaint could possibly be.  She would pl= ay a note several times and say "sound." Then she would look at me as if to = get assurance that I too heard the offending problem.  Some of the note= s that she objected to had the slightly off unisons so I cleaned up the tuni= ng.  This did not phase her.  Finally I got some paper, took the f= allboard off, pointed out the numbers on the keys and made a chart and asked= her to mark Like, Not Like on each key, hoping to see some similarity in th= e likes and not likes.  I also mentioned that if we could get someone w= ho spoke English that it might go better.  This week when I returned sh= e indeed had a friend who spoke much better English.  The chart was fil= led with remarks like "Not beautiful, more exact, finish sooner, too over, e= tc.  After mUUUUUch discussion with the friend I discovered that her ma= in complaints were the undamped high treble notes sustaining, some impact so= unds of the hammer hitting the string in the top octave, and the dampers in = the bass not cutting off rapidly enough on a very hard blow.  There was= not one problem that did not fall squarely in the range of normalcy.  = I spent two hours trying to explain that there no dampers in the high treble= and that the dampers in the bass were not under performing and I voiced thr= ee hammers in the top octave to see if that would eliminate some offending s= ound.  I left feeling very unsuccessful with no idea whether or not the= customer was appeased.  She waived good-bye to me and had her friend t= ell me that she would call the store and ask for me when she needed to have = it tuned.  Oh Boy! TP </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>