Pitch raises

[Kent Swafford]

Newton Hunt wrote:

>Pitch raising takes energy, time, knowledge and skill...

>If one, two or three tunings is what it takes to stabilize the piano at
>440 that is what it should get right then, not later...
>Coming back later is a waste of time, tuners and
>customers, and resources, tuners and customers.  Do it now, do it right
>and the customer gets a finely tuned piano that is stable and playable.

Steve Pearson wrote:

> While it is true that one can do the pitch raise itself in a matter of 
>minutes, say 15 or so, it has been my experience that  if I take the time 
>on a second or even third pass, and then do a careful tuning, there is 
>little of the dramatic 'drop' we often associate with the pitch raise...
>You should neither give away 
>extra time and expertise, nor reward negligence.  But if you are willing to
>spend the time to do it carefully, you may be able to schedule the next 
>tuning at the regular interval, with the caveat that the customer may 
>notice some unison 'drift', and that this should be considered normal 
>under the circumstances.  And charge them for the extra time required. 
>Remind them that the next tuning will be at regular price, and will be 
>more solid as a result of the pitch raise you just did. It has worked for me.

Newton Hunt and Steve Pearson are about as right as right can be, in my 
opinion.

For the past two decades I have done pitch corrections and fine tunings 
in one sitting. Not once has this ever caused a problem. Modern visual 
tuning devices (or years of aural pitch correction experience) facilitate 
very accurate pitch corrections that prepare a piano for an immediate 
fine tuning. Many, maybe most, pitch corrections add little or no time to 
a tuning appointment, because an accurate pitch raise often serves very 
well as a first tuning pass. (This is a big reason why it is extremely 
good practice to do _all_ tunings in two passes. That first pass is 
_often_ a pitch correction.) In extreme cases, when a pitch correction 
does add to the tuning time, I will charge for that extra time at my 
normal hourly rate. I tell the customer that the piano may not stay in 
tune quite as well as it might have if they had been having the piano 
serviced regularly all along, but that the tuning should be good until 
the next time that the seasons change, at which point every piano in 
town, including theirs, will need tuning again anyway.

BTW, it is my belief that the drop that is part of pitch raising is 
present no matter how small or large the correction may be. It is 
sometimes said that a pitch correction pass is not necessary for pitch 
corrections of 4 cents or less. I believe there _is_ a drop associated 
with the smallest of pitch corrections but that drop (traditionally 
considered to be 25%) is small enough that it may get lost in normal 
tuning tolerances. In other words, a 4 cent pitch raise may result in a 1 
cent drop, a drop small enough to be insignificant in many situations. 
When the finest quality work is needed, the first tuning pass should very 
often to always be a "pitch correction."

When I come to a piano that needs a pitch raise, it gets it. I warn the 
customer of the possibility of breakage, and proceed. If the customer had 
been concerned about costs, he or she would probably never have called 
me, so I never bring it up, and never discuss extra costs other than to 
say that there may be some. And then I keep the extra charges modest.

Pitch lowerings are a bit different. It is a bit difficult for me to 
claim that a sharp piano is neglected. I smooth out the pitch level 
without extra charges and leave it sharp. By doing so, the piano will be 
closer to concert pitch the next winter than if I lowered it in the 
summer.

Kent Swafford