anyone can buy a hammer and take out an ad

Piannaman@aol.com Piannaman@aol.com
Thu, 8 Apr 2004 00:21:15 EDT


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A little whine with dinner,

Yes, it's a free country.  Anyone can hang out a shingle and fish for 
business as a  "Toona."  

I got a call about a hanging damper on a relatively new RX3 Kawai from a 
dealer.  I said that I'd go check it out.  I got the number of the customer, and 
it's a good hour drive to her house.  I asked her if she'd had the piano tuned 
recently.  She said, "yes, but he says he doesn't do any of the mechanical 
stuff." A hanging damper?  C'mon...

She said she was happy with his tuning, but she needed the damper fixed.  
Okay, I made the appointment, went out today and burnished a couple of tight 
guide rail bushings with teflon powder, then played the piano a bit to make sure 
everything was sound,which it was.  

Sounded pretty bad, though, considering the three-week-old tuning.  I played 
a particularly gnarly bass octave for the lady and asked her if it sounded in 
tune.  "No," she said.  I re-tuned the bass(on principal, and in hopes of 
getting her biz in the future), then did a Tunelab check of the temperament.  The 
previous guy apparently asked her if she wanted a jazz, classical, or folk 
type temperament.  I was a bit curious after a thirds test revealed no proximity 
to ET.

Tunelab wasn't kind to the man's work.  Not only was there no specific plan 
in the temperament, it was on the average about 9 cents flat.  "He said there 
would be some slippage, and he guarantees his work for 30 days..." said the 
nice lady.  I was doing a good job of refraining from negative comments, but it 
was a challenge.  She then said that "he doesn't really like this piano, mostly 
because of the plastic in the action."  And he doesn't like the modern 
generation of tuners who can "only tune by machine, and don't use their ears."

Oh well.   He's only been in biz for 25 years.  

Dave Stahl



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