World's Worst Tuner

[Les Smith]

It's 3:40 AM and you guys are still posting, so I thought "what the
heck", I've got time for one more! The topic is the "World's Worst
Tuner", or, at least the worst I ever heard. We've all seen our share
of "cobbler" tunings, but never anything like this.

I've known tuners who set their temperament octave by using a set of
chromatic tuning forks and even one old-timer who did so by using a
set of chromatic pitch-pipes, but the worst I ever saw or heard was
the guy who tuned by phonograph record!

I watched him tune a piano in a school in the early "60's. His tuning
kit consisted of a tuning hammer, some mutes, a record player and a
record. The record was  a recording of the pitches of all 88 notes on
the piano. As the record played, he would try to match the string on the
piano to what he was hearing. As I remember it, he  tuned the three
strings of the unisons one at a time to the record, and never to each
other and then just moved on to the next note. No checks were ever done
and I can't remember him even checking the octaves. He went over the
piano once, packed up his phonograph and record and moved on to the
next piano in the school. He had been low-bidder on the contract. I
just stood in amazement and watched him "tune", never before or since
seeing anything like it. After he left, I went over and tried out the
piano. It was my first introduction to the "Bad News Temperament" men-
tioned in an earlier post.

Years ago, on the inside of books of matches, they used to have an ad
for a company that said "learn meat cutting at home" I always wondered
how that worked. I imagine that the phonograph tuner must have seen a
similar ad; something that said "Amaze people with your ability to im-
mediately begin tuning pianos upon receipt of our record". They didn't
lie. I WAS amazed. If he wasn't the world's WORST tuner, he certainly
ranked in the top three! :-)

4:05 AM--I'm outta here!

Les Smith
lessmith@buffnet.net