<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">A tuner who does a cheap job in an hour or so, may well leave the piano sounding quite good, but in all probability it will deteriorate within a few hours, days or weeks.</BLOCKQUOTE> I copied this phrase from the website it was suggested to visit.  That is precisely my point about presenting the EBVT or any other tuning at the Convention.  45 minutes is just enough time to set oneself up to ridicule.   Any of the tunings I did for the Baldwin recitals took 6-8 hours.  I lost track of the many hours I put in on the Walter piano on which the EBVT was presented at the Convention in Providence. Even in the response article I wrote about this event, I conceded that perhaps I was the "winner" of the event more because I had the best sounding piano and had spent many, many hours tuning it before I had it locked in to the program I had designed for it, each of the 88 notes accurate to within 1/1000 of a semitone.  And certainly, there were those who were disturbed by and questioned my hours of relentless pounding. Yet, it's true that the ordinary, every day tunings I do usually take less than an hour.  Many of my customers are repeat customers for whom I have tuned for many years.  It simply doesn't take any longer than that and their pianos also meet a very high degree of perfection in tuning, well beyond the standards of the PTG Tuning Exam. Concert pianos on stages and console pianos in living rooms are not the same kinds of instruments.  I know, for example that when I am going to tune a Steinway grand in someone's home, the time I spend will be much more, maybe even double. Time spent on any particular tuning is all relative to the circumstances. Tomorrow, I will go to the Frank Lloyd Wright estate to tune for the concert series going on there now.  It will take me about 30 minutes to tune the 9 foot Bechstein grand.  I know that because that's all the time it has taken me for several years now but each note will be solidly locked on the program I designed for that piano some 10 years ago.  Then I have to tune the harpsichord, (and that will probably take twice the time) then make the 35 mile trip to meet my call as a principal singer and actor in the Bernstein show, On The Town.  Making the costume change from the first scene to the next one I'm in takes about the same amount of time that it takes to tune the Bechstein. As it turns out, the concert tuning I will do on the 9 foot Bechstein will take the very least amount of time of all the activities I will do that day, including showering and shaving. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin</HTML>