[pianotech] Tuning stability problem

[Ron Overs]

>So Ron:
>
>How much do you charge for a piano massage?
>
>Will Truitt :-)

Hi Will,

I'll try to remain serious amongst the jesting commentators, lol.

What I charge depends on how much extra time is involved. Sometimes 
it might cost little more than a straight tuning if the overall pitch 
doesn't change too much, while on other occasions the piano might 
never have been rubbed down, which might result in a dramatic 
increase in the tuning work required to straighten the beast.

To follow on from Ron N's comment that the backscale tension can be 
up as well as down, I agree it can, but with pianos that haven't seen 
service for some years the most usual scenario is for the tension to 
be lower.

Typically, for a piano which hasn't seen a tech for a few years, I 
might spend 10 minutes on a rub down, 15 minutes adjusting lost 
motion, and another 15 minutes after the tuning doing something about 
the voicing. This would take 2/3 hour on top of the tuning. I charge 
A$75 per hour so the overall fee would go up from our base tuning fee 
of A$190 to A$240. If I have to do a pitch raise it would cost more 
again, but often not by as much as the 30 minutes it generally takes 
for the pitch raise. Mostly, when a pitch raise is necessary, it 
allows for the tuning to be done a bit quicker because the pitch 
raise sets the piano up to be a bit easier than it might be if one 
were to do a tuning without a pitch raise a year or two since the 
last service.

If I strike a piano where the voicing is particularly nasty (bright), 
I'll get the needles out and lay into the piano as a first voicing 
stage, just to give my ears a bit easier time of it during the 
tuning. I'll spend a little more time, at the end, refining the 
voicing once its in tune. It just amazes me how many pianos get tuned 
repeatedly without any other work being done, while the voicing 
continues to simply scream. Often the clients hate their piano on 
account of its brightness and, once it is voiced to sound more like a 
piano than some sort of deranged xylophone, its not uncommon to hear 
"I never realised that my piano could sound like that". Tuning is 
just the petrol in the tank. There's a whole lot of other stuff that 
we can do to make the playing experience more pleasurable - and we 
can even get paid for it. As usual I've gone off topic again.

Ron O.
-- 
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
    Grand Piano Manufacturers
_______________________

Web http://overspianos.com.au
mailto:ron at overspianos.com.au
_______________________