In a message dated 98-07-02, Phil Ryan writes: << My question is- how many strings should one break before declaring the piano untunable and in need of a restringing or rebuilding. The owner is only interested in having it "tuned." Any advice? >> ---------------------------------- String breakage can be more of a public relations problem than a technical one. The owner's expectation for normal tuning after neglect may be unreasonable, and this needs to be addressed. The secret is to remember that the piano has been neglected, and shift the burden where it belongs (the customer) in as gracious and diplomatic a way as possible, and BEFORE STARTING WORK. I always tell the client several things while discussing costs before I start on a piano I haven't serviced before: 1) Pianos are amazingly hardy but, like our cars, require regular service. Lack of maintenance can accelerate decay, and increases the chance of trouble when routine service is attempted. 2) They needn't feel guilty about the neglect, but it does increase THEIR risk at this visit. I can give a fixed quote for a regularly maintained piano, but have to have more tolerance in the estimate for the unknown in this one. 3) Strings lose their elasticity over time, and because of the long interval since the last service, some may break when I try to tune them to their proper pitch. 4) Although the client will be responsible for paying for broken strings [quote price here], I want to protect their interests, and will stop if as many as three break (or two close together), and lower the pitch. While this will not be to the correct pitch level, it will make the piano sound better until it can be rebuilt or replaced. They may be responsible for the cost of several strings (it is even possible, though rare, for really fragile ones to break on the way down), the cost of the pitch raise, the cost of the time to lower, and a tuning. 5. At your discretion, you may also want to discuss the very limited instance of catastrophe, like plate breakage or back/pinblock separation, stressing its rarity while alerting them to the possibility. If any of the above scares them off, I don't want to start. I tell them if they don't feel like taking the risk at this time, I can understand that, and that we can call it quits for just my minimum service call fee to cover my time for coming out. Incidentally, my experience doesn't indicate that strings which are long left below pitch and then brought up have any shorter life than those regularly tuned; perhaps the opposite. It's just that the breakage risk is all concentrated into a short time span. I also don't see any advantage to bringing them up gradually -- I just pitch raise quickly until they are very close, then fine tune, all in one visit. With enough pre-tuning before the fine, and if I am lucky enough to get by without breakage, they will sound more than acceptable in six months, certainly much better than before I started, and from then on they're stable. With breakage, we need at least one return trip to pull up the new ones, unless they have been muted off until the six month visit. Regards. Bob Davis
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