World's Worst Tuner

[Randy Potter]

Commenting on my story of the guy who used the old brown Conn and gave
the piano "the lifetime tune", and Gordon Large's follow-up comments,
Arnold Schmitt of Raleigh, NC remarked:

>I have never heard of a case as serious as this, but I have surely heard of
>the tuner who comes into the house, supposedly checks the piano, and finds
>that "only three or four keys" needed tuning.  Also, I personally know of
>somebody who tunes his pianos in usually half an hour or less because he
>basically just tunes the two or three octives around middle c and stops.
>His theory is that he is payed by the piano, not the hour, and, if they
>complain, he will go back and "finish", but, if they don't, he got in and
>got out that much more quickly.

Fortunately (though not for Alaskans, nor those living wherever he may
have moved later) that guy moved to Alaska. Actually, he ran away, and
the police still have a warrant out for his arrest (unless they have
caught and prosecuted him by now), on a charge of theft. He "sold" his
store and started a truck sales operation, took dozens of pianos and
organs on consignment, then sold them and kept the money.

At any rate, I occasionally hear of people who decline to raise the pitch
if a piano is flat, who just "touch up the unisons" or "tune the piano to
itself". We have a guy in our area who does that, and the several
technicians who know better, and who do better, follow him up a lot.

When someone asks me about such proceedures, I tell them the following:

Suppose you took your car into Schwab's and asked them to "check the
tires".
They do.
As you drive down the street you notice your car is sloshing around as
you change lanes or turn corners, so drive back in and ask them about
what they did.
"Sure, we checked them. Some had more pressure than others, so we made
them all the same. They all have about 28 pounds pressure in them."
"But the sidewall says they should have 35#, not 28#", you reply.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, as long as they are all the same", they reply.
Balogna! It DOES matter!
Your piano was designed to have about 40,000 pounds of tension on it
(about 35,000 pounds for spinets). That tension bleeds off over time,
just as tires on a car go flat - whether it is driven, or whether it just
sits in the driveway. When the tension is allowed to bleed off, and the
pitch to drop, it is like letting a fat lady out of a girdle. Glue joints
break loose, and the soundboard goes flat as the rim spreads and it can
actually pull the soundboard apart. That is one reason we want to keep
the piano up to pitch.
Another reason is because if you hear flat tones, you will learn an
incorrect sense of pitch. This is especially true of children, who will
learn to sing flat if they grow up hearing a flat instrument, and will
have a poor sense of developed pitch their whole lives."

Yes, there are some pianos that cannot be brought up to pitch (A-440)
without excessive string breakage, but I find this in only about one of
every 100 or 200 old uprights which are flat when I get to them. I follow
up "tuners" all the time who make it a habit of saying a piano cannot be
brought up to pitch as an excuse for doing anything that might result in
a broken string (because they are incompetent at replacing them - ? - or
perhaps because they are too lazy - or perhaps because they just do not
know any better). So they won't even try.
It is sad, because not only does the piano owner lose the benefit of
having a properly tuned piano, but the tuner looses the benefit of
earning an appropriate income for the services he provides. Not only does
he cheat his clients, but he cheats himself out of the pleasure of
knowing he is being fairly paid for the work he has done, and of being
paid for doing additional work (pitch raise or chip tunings).

Randy Potter, R.P.T.

Randy Potter, R.P.T.
Randy Potter School of Piano Technology
"Training Competent Piano Technicians Into the 21st Century"
Celebrating 10 Years, with students & graduates in over 55 countries!
See our web page at www.tuningschool.com
We are accepting registrations for our 1997 Hands-on Training Seminar
July 6-13, 1997 @ Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN.