---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment I almost broke my own rule today and, luckily, didn't. (There's a question at the end of the sob story.) The rule is: WHENEVER POSSIBLE, always schedule first-time-I'm-seeing-a piano appointments in the early afternoon and NEVER schedule another appointment after it. I don't care WHAT they tell you on the phone! What they told me on the phone: "Oh, it's a fairly new Kimball in excellent condition. It just needs tuning. My mom gave it to us." Piano is a 70's console. Nice furniture. It is 80+ cents flat in tenor and bass, 30-60 cents flat in the bass. Item learned through a little questioning: It was last tuned at least 20 years ago. Maybe more. No one suspected it was badly out of tune until a skilled pianist, a visitor to the home, was asked to play it. Well, whadduhyaknow! PR, PR, tune, tune, tune ... As I moved up the scale on the long bridge, the strings became more and more reactive to the slightest touch of the hammer BUT were the very devil to get on pitch and stable. Tune, tune, tune ... Has fairly shallow angles from pin to and over the V-bar (which, nicely, has the old nickle-steel rod insert) and only a thin, narrow strip of felt under the strings ... "That red stuff shore is perty, Ethyl Sue, I wonder what's it for?" "I dunno, Clem, maybe it's that thermalnucliunderwear thingy." Anyway, acts like rusty strings on a steep grand plate with 3 inches of felt. I grab my trusty CLP in the syringe bottle. I drown the whole friction area. I look more closely at the bottle as I put the lid on. I realize I have just washed everything with wallpaper remove solution. I panic. I borrow a hairdryer ... but, I digress. Ultimately, tuning is so bad I question the pressure bar. It refuses to answer my questions. I turn each screw about 20 degrees left. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Whatthehell.) I start tuning the tenor and treble all over again--now down 20 cents or so. PR, tune, tune, tune ... A little easier to find and settle to pitch. Or is it my imagination? Oh, look, it's a UFO. Tune, fine-tune, tweak ... play ... cringe, whimper, tune, tune, tweak ... quit. It is as in-tune as this boy can make it on this particular visit. Strings need leveling or hammers need attention, voicing is icky, tone is whiny, lot's of false beats, etc. (And the "etc." was particularly lousy.) I play for the delightful owners. They think it sounds "Wonderful!" They do not know from pianos, eh, what? I play another merry little tune: Diddely, dinkety, tinkelty, tink ... Toink! (A 6th octave string has passed away; only ghost tones remain.) I replace the string, tune, tune. I present a bill for regular tuning fee X 2 (these are friends of my daughter, I should mention). He says, "Why that doesn't seem like enough for all that work you've done (from 2 pm till about 6:30 pm)." "Well, that's what I'm charging, anything more would be a tip." He rounds up the payment with a $40 tip. This is a good thing. I stumble out the door and head for the nearest fast-food emporium (I am 2 and a half hours from home). Here's the promised question: Is this work not sometimes a physical and/or emotional wipeout, or am I crazy? Or all of the above? Thanks. I had to dump this somewhere and my wife has heard it all before. Alan Barnard Salem, Missouri ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/8d/f9/92/fa/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC