In-Piano Records Revisited

[Ron Nossaman]

Howdy Carl,

Putting off the afternoon of shop work I have to do today to make room for
the piano coming in tomorrow. I'm about out of excuses, but maybe I can milk
this for a little more time.


>Good morning, Ron.
>
>I think a lot of technicians mistakenly believe that the piano owner
>will use this information.  If not, why leave the card?  Even with RH
>data, pitch level, and date,  you still don't know how accurately the
>piano was tuned, which is just as likely to be the reason the piano
>needs to be corrected as typical (or atypical?) humidity changes.

*Not me. If the customer likes me, and appreciates my work, she'll remember
me just fine without a card. Actually, the card isn't the primary thing, the
tuning information is where it's at. I log the info on the keys, in a
vertical, and on the bottom of the music rack in a grand. It also goes on
the invoice, and on the back of the sacrificial business card. The card is
mostly a diversionary ploy to give the insecure tech that may follow
something to take out for shim stock, or the pathologically neat, or
organized customer something to take to the black hole of card files to be
placed with my other eight cards, each of which has a single tuning date,
temperature, and humidity on the back. When I next see the piano, I still
have all of my old information, and possibly the last tech's card with
(maybe) a date. Since I'm not pathologically, or even discernibly,
organized, I can see the state of the maintenance schedule without having to
maintain separate records at home. Should the customer move to another
venue, the tech(s) who take over the service will at least have the chance
(if they look for it) of seeing that the piano was last tuned six months, or
nine years, ago instead of the two-or-three years the customer thinks have
passed. See, it's not for the customer, it's not advertising for me, it's
information for the tech... whoever that may be.    

>
>I like having records I can refer to.  That's why I bring a printout of
>their recent service history with me.  It's more detailed and more
>portable than anything I could scrawl on the keys.  The few times I've
>seen extensive service history inside the piano, it was too long ago to
>be of any use.  They called me and we're starting over.    

*You're not exactly starting over. If those antique dates indicate that the
piano was tuned every year or so through the first fifteen years of it's
life, You have a pretty good idea of what to expect from next few years,
even if there is a five year gap in the dates. If the previous tech(s) kept
detailed records at home, and left no indication in the piano, you would
indeed be starting over.

*BTW, I don't SCRAWL anything on the keys. I leave an orderly, legible list
of dates, temperature, and humidity. Rarely, I will indicate a major pitch
adjustment, like ^40. 


>Fourteen cards!?  Now there's a puzzler.  The standard joke around here
>is that we use the card stock to shim key slips, grand actions, etc. 
>:-)
>
>
>"Kilroy was here . . . . . "      
>
>
>Carl

*Yea, that's a local joke in probably any part of the world you could name.
%-) My point is that I don't take the other techs' cards out of pianos. I
find it unusual that other techs extend me the same courtesy.

Drat, gotta go to work. 

Later

 Ron