Moral Dilema ... Help!

[Don]

Hi Allan,

I would not comment on the other tuners work in any fashion. I would offer
my services to the church below his cost price or since you are already in
their employ offer to tune in return for an income tax receipt for your
full retail price.

If you comment on the other fellows work your own reputation will be
tarnished. I know it is hard to keep your mouth shut--but it is the best
policy.

If you are a member of PTG I believe in the bylaws it suggests that
commenting on another tuner's work is not ethical, although I'm sure that
positive comments would not be amiss!

You have not been asked for your opinion of his work. If you are try to
find a positive or neutral thing to say. Example "He certainly tunes quickly."


At 01:14 PM 7/13/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>        Dear LIST:     I could really use some advice on this one! Also,
>any technical opinions from not ETD users would help.     THE PIANO: Kawai
>UTC-7 studio in like-new condition. This piano has a remarkable scale
>design: I measured inharmonicity at C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, and C6; used
>TuneLab to calculate a curve based on 6:3 bass and 4:1 treble. Came out
>right on, very “flat” variances at the extremes, i.e., no observable
>deviation from the optimal curve. Switched the display to 4:2 and the bass
>and treble deviation curves absolutely disappeared in the middle of the
>piano. And I mean exactly flat, every note on the curve at 4:2. Wow.    
>THE SITUATION: Our church piano has been tuned for many years by a tuner
>who stays in a motel and tunes in this area every six months. He is not a
>Guild tuner so he will not see this. I was once called to meet him at the
>church and let him in. I stayed to chat while he tuned, nice guy. He uses
>Braid-White, C fork, 4ths and 5ths, strictly aural. No problem. In fact,
>this piano ought to be an aural tuning dream! He does no strip muting and
>tunes with just one split mute, i.e., left string, center string, then
>right string. So he tunes his C4 and the C4 unison, then off he goes on his
>temperament, tuning the unisons as he goes. He never visited the same
>string twice for any reason and did the whole piano in about 40 minutes.   
>  The piano sounded pretty good when he left, though I didn’t measure it or
>really test it in any way. I was, at the time, the church pianist and
>noticed no problems except that his tunings didn’t seem to “hold” very well
>or very long. On the other hand, we all know what the dramatic climate
>swings in churches do to pianos so I wasn’t about to blame the tuner.    
>MY ACTIONS: Lately, it had gotten so sour that no one could stand it. So,
>with permission, I tuned it as a donation of service, and happy to do so.
>Friday, I used calculated overpulls to pitch-correct it because A4 was
>about 6 cents flat, as was, roughly, the whole center of the piano. The
>bass was flat of my calculated curve by 10-12 cents and more. A1 was over
>50 cents flat of the curve which already had an offset of about 17 cents.
>The high treble tended flat and the last few notes were very off, A7 to C8
>was sharp a bunch. Saturday, I returned and fine-tuned the piano. It is
>dead-on pitch and sounds great, very sweet. (I’m bragging on the piano, not
>on me.)     YIKES: Today at church the custodian told me that she let the
>tuner in on Thursday (the day before I worked on the piano) and he was here
>“30 or 40 minutes banging away on the piano.”     MY THEORY: I think this
>fellow can take a nearly-in-tune piano and make it sound “okay” to most
>people in less than an hour. I suspect that he isn’t setting the pins
>terribly well, nor really settling the string, either. And, in this case,
>it is clear that the piano was too far off for a one-pass tuning in the
>first place. Also, I think he is sloppy in tuning the lower bass—the only
>check I saw him using was listening to the double octave—and I think he is
>just guessing at the high treble (maybe losing some hearing?). He is so
>“confident” in his work that he really doesn’t do checks at all: When I
>watched him, he finished at C8, diddled out a few little tune phrases on
>the piano (about 20 seconds worth), packed up, and left. No checks of
>3rd-10th-17th, no running 3rds, 5ths, 10ths, or 17ths, no Maj 6th-Min 3rd,
>nothing. Just his 4ths and 5ths for the temperament, then single octaves up
>and down with a couple of double octaves in the bass.     THE DILEMMA: If I
>knew what I know and were a plumber or an accountant, I would sure speak
>up. But as a tuner, SHOULD I speak up? How on earth can I do it without
>sounding like a self-serving idiot carping about a competitor?     Alan R.
>Barnard  Salem, MO          
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Regards,
Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.P.T.

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