cheated customer. was Re: Whitney spinet

[J Patrick Draine]

Dear Wim:
First of all, I'd like to complement you on your excellent article in the
November PTJournal.
But...
I'd like to suggest that your response [>In my opinion, you were dishonest,
and cheated the customer.] seems a bit too strongly worded.
My *initial* reaction was the same as yours, but after some thought I
concluded that what he meant to say was that rather than doing a "sudden"
pitchraise, for example with a 25% overshoot, he instead took the pitch
barely up to A440 on each pass, necessitating 4 passes to stabilize the
pitch and tuning.

While I almost always do my pitchraises to A440 as rapidly as possible, it
is legitimate to skip overpull on the first pass if the scale or string
condition warns me that breakage is very likely.

As to the amount that he charged for the "extra tuning" ... we all have
different rates and approaches. Personally, my standard tuning fee is 1.5
my hourly rate, and pitch raises are by the hourly rate on top of that (0.5
to 1.0 hour). Not knowing his fee structure, I'm not ready to condemn him
for his approach.

Your explanation of how you would have approached the situation was how I
usually approach the average piano.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Patrick Draine