CAUT Guidelines

[Donald R McKechnie]

Richard,

In response to your first paragraph, I believe the variables in the CAUT
Guidelines formula cover the same things as you mentioned regarding the
Steinway D and studio pianos. I recently received the Steinway Guidelines but
have not tried it out yet. Unfortunately I am not well versed in Excel. I
suspect the Steinway formula is similar to the CAUT formula but I cannot find
how it is written in Excel. 

I agree with your suggestion that a whole maintenance plan for contractual
situations is best. Before taking this position at IC, I contracted with
schools. I did the same as everyone in the area and sold my work based on
tuning. That’s just the way it was done and I suspect it was the same most
everywhere. The present CAUT Guidelines does not address this issue and that
is one of the reasons why we are taking steps to revise. If you have time to
look at the CAUT Guidelines, please give us your ideas on how this information
can be included.

Don McKechnie
Ithaca College



>Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:34:01 -0600
>From: Richard West <rwest1@unl.edu>
>Subject: Re: CAUT Guidelines
>
>Don:
>
>I haven't consulted the guidelines for awhile, but off the top of my head I
>wondered if there's a way to look at institutional service (or any piano service)
>on the basis of the type of piano and hours of use.  The Steinway guidelines that
>I have do that.  For example a Steinway D in a performance area requires "X"
>number of hours of regulation and tuning in order to maintain it at top
>performance level.   A studio piano is figured the same way and so on for every
>type of piano a music department might have.
>
>The reason I'm curious about approaching piano service from a yearly contractual
>basis is that it seems that approach would serve a variety of needs not only
>institutional but private.  Why is it, for example, that so few private
>technicians only sell their work based on a tuning.  It seems there are very few
>people out there who try to say to a customer that a charge per year for total
>maintenace would be a specified amount.  The emphasis would be on total service,
>not just tuning.  Perhaps the CAUT guidelines addresses this aspect of piano
>maintenance.  It not, maybe it should be looked into.
>
>Richard West
>University of Nebraska