Ok so I had the piano tuned today, and mentioned to the tuner, there was a slight squeak from the damper pedal when it was fully depressed.

So he had made a little adjustment somewhere and the squeak was gone.

Not 10 minutes later the slightest touch of the pedal and it's squeaking like an angry mouse!

I phoned the tuner up to say it had gone a bit nuts and he said he'd adjusted it to where it was supposed to be, so he'd have to charge me again to come out and look at it.

Obviously i'm a bit annoyed!

Any idea about what to do with it?

Call back, talk to his wife. She'll put a burr under Daddy's saddle. I'm sure she's heard this story before... and knows what the wind-up will be.

Meanwhile, shop for a new piano tech. Ask other people, who have pianos, whom they employ, and for how long, and what kind of job has been done for them.

This is probably a very easy fix--- and a ridiculous excuse. You need a better guy. I'd be glad to recommend mine, but Ireland's a long way from California.

That is a lousy thing to do when you have adjusted the pedal to fix the problem and the result was the same. This fellow should come back to finish up.

A small bit of lubrication in the correct place should do the trick. The excuse you are getting is pretty lame. After all, you did not ask for the pedal to be adjusted, you asked for the squeaking to be prevented. Whether or not the tech adjusted the pedal correctly is not the point……

If you know how to get the bottom board out we could maybe help you over the phone here possibly.....

If one implies that he has fixed the problem via adjustment or lubrication, or whatever, ethics dictate that he should take responsibility for the failure of his "repair."

Word of mouth goes a long way in this business. He won't be in business for any length of time if he continues this modus operandi.

Folks:

We only have one small piece of the whole story...

If Bryan does not care for the service he is getting, he sould look for other service. Belfast surely has other tuners.

Bryan,

Did he charged you some money to fix the pedal squeak?

Normally, what I include in the price of the tuning service is adjusting pedals, not fixing any other pedal issue.


I have had clients which ask me to do repairs they want not to pay for.

If I want to be paid for a fix, I always give my price in advance, before doing it.

However, if I accept to fix something for free as part of the "tuning service", then I assume the hole responsability of what I did and in case of receiving a call back I don't charge the second visit.

Maybe your tech feels no obligation because he did not charged you the repair in the first visit, but if he did not asked to be paid he has now to do it for free.

Ah...this is a good example of why it is always good to do the "hundred pedal test"!. This was recommended by Steve Brady in a class he gave at our chapter about pedals. If you think you've fixed the squeek work the pedal up and down 100 times. If its still gone, you're probably in the clear for a while. It surprising that sometimes on the 60th or 70th oscillation of the pedal the noise will return!

One factor in regards to call backs is how far away is the tuners home from yours? If he has a long way to go, I can sympathize somewhat.

The pedal may have stopped squeeking because he was manipulating the parts. I've had that happen often. If you just wiggle the parts down there around a bit, it may go away for a time. The squeek may now be worse, because he probably removed some of the lost motion from the pedal, so now the pedal and related parts are going through a greater range of motion.

You may be able to solve this problem by adding a piece of firm material of proper thickness to the bottom of the piano where the pedal comes down. This will make the pedal stop sooner. Keep in mind that if it is too thick the dampers may not completely lift off the strings, resulting in some more frustration.

You could even try to add some lost motion to the pedal by turning the adjustment nut, thus putting things back to where they were (more or less).

Here is a website that has some advice on how to adjust pedals:
http://www.petesummers.com/pedals.html

Best wishes!