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very good one? In other words, if you work on a piano that will have poor tonal quality even after tuning or is not capable of being tuned well do you find this discouraging or do you just do the best you possibly can given the piano to work with? Do you still have pleasure in doing the best you can with a poor piano?

Of course not, to the first question as posed. What pleasure can there be in working hard on something you know will not turn out well? Still one does the best one can. It is all the piano some people will ever have. I'm sure most mechanics would rather work on a Daimler product than a Kia too, but most can't afford the Mercedes Benz.

Kind of a silly question? What brought this up?

Depends if you view your work as servicing the piano or serving the customer. Those fine folk that have lower quality pianos usually appreciate the service more, if for no other reason than they have to wait longer to afford it and the piano needs it more. These are also often pianos that young students are using. And it is a thrill for all involved to hear them progress.

The tuning can be about the customer instead of about the piano.

I like then challenge but all depends of the customer.

Even a poor sounding piano can be made a little musical, with the use of tricks and much work, so if I see I can do it I will try too but only under certain circumstances.

Taking a piano from unplayeable to a little enjoyeable is at last rewarding for the help it provides to the pianist (often young)...

Well said, Jeff.

& me 100% Jeff.

It's all about customer service and something to practice on. I honed all my skills on lousy pianos. Can't make 'em worse but you can make them a whole helluvalot better. I still find more satisfaction in that than anything else.

I charge a whole lot less for struggling families. It's my way of giving back to the community that sustains me.

Ps. I farm out a lot of work to struggling young tuners too.

What Dale said.

I think most of us view our work as both servicing the piano and the customer.

Yesterday I tuned 3 Kawai's out of town. One was a Kawai console 803 M with a cracked sound board that also has lots of mechanical issues. One was a Kawai GE-1. The third was a Kawai GS-70 7'5".

This past year, we did some very major work to the GE and GS grands including major regulation and major voicing. The owner of all 3 pianos truly appreciates what he now has in these two grand pianos verses the comparison to what is not, in the 803 M.

He is so happy and thrilled with the difference in the way that the two grands now play and the over all tone that is now available in them that was not available before we did the work, that he wants me to do "what I can" with the 803 M piano too, knowing full well that it will not, and cannot sound, like these two grands. But, it can be made "better."

That said, he appreciates as much as any good technician, a quality instrument. Because, a quality instrument is one that gives us as a piano technician and the client that owns it, something "grand" to work with. Something with potential. Something that will actually come out as it should and can come out. Whereas with a poor quality instrument, that is simply impossible to do by comparison. So, an unequivocal YES and NO to the question.

Of course not, but at the same time, the checks cash the same.

There have been some poor quality pianos that I have enjoyed more than some high-end mostly because the graciousness, and appreciation from the client. It can be very satisfying to make something that was a basket case, into something that can be played. The client treats you like a hero in these cases, especially if a previous technician made them feel bad about their piano.

One of my mentors used to say when clients asked about what he thought of their less-than-stellar piano: "Well it's not a Steinway, but then again you didn't have to pay $60,000 for it either!" It would get a chuckle and usually get him out of having to say anything more about it.

This is an old piano was given as a gift. Max tryed make it the tuning for a modest fee. Customers happy, Max also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYrv2950b44

I think a tech could enjoy both types of pianos equally simply by having a different perspective for each. Junkier pianos have often had heaps of neglect thrown in on top, the differences in what we do with them are much more noticable over all. The repairs and tunings on these often go hand in hand with a smaller budget, so there is some creative thinking going on as to balancing things out for the biggest bang for the buck.

The nicer pianos allow us to measure ourselves at the extremes of what techs are capable of. They don't stand in the way of stellar tunings and function and someone who owns a 50K instrument usually doesn't mind paying for the time and expertise involved in keeping it sounding and working the way it was intended to.

BTW, most mechanics hate working on Daimler/Benz vehicles. This was the company that basically wrote the book on integration of simple parts inside more complex ones,manufacturing non servicable parts, and to put it in a nutshell...shoehorned huge engines into tiny bays. Its not comforting to hear your mechanic call you in the midst of a water pump change out and ask if you want the timeing chain ect done to while he's at it, because half the car is taken apart to get at it.

I find my enjoyment level noticibly depreciate on pianos which have some stupid complex "modern" design change used that makes a simple task a time consuming one.
Take for example something as simple as removing some muffler rails on some pianos to tune. There are the kind where you simply bend in a hinge arm off a pin and its done. Then you have these others you need to remove a bunch of tiny screws, disassembling a cable yoke ect... Things don't need to be service complicated to properly work and old school designs kept this in mind.

let's always so it

Sometimes I get the biggest kick out of poor quality pianos that I can improve quickly and easily. An example is an old upright that I had tuned once before several years ago and they called me to tune it again last week. It had really gone wacko! The main problem was the bass section. The pins just were not holding anymore so I did a quick CA (super glue) treatment, took out the lost motion, tuned it and it sounded pretty good. They were thrilled that it could be saved. It was very rewarding.

Considering the variety, number and seriousness of replies not so silly, I think.

I have a five year old Mason BB. I don't really know where this level of quality fits in with all the pianos my tech works on.

Maybe it is more about liking people.

Are you saying the two are mutually exclusive? Can't we do both?

+1

If I can't get the instrument to sound and play better than a digital, I question my efforts.

I have heard many poor sounding spinets and accoustics which the best of the digitals beat hands down. Not surprising considerring that the sound from the digitals are actually sampled off of high end concert grands.

It depends on the piano, and it depends on the customer.

As others have already said, working on a high-end piano can be like racing a thoroughbred, testing our expertise and finesse; working on crappy pianos is where I sometimes can effect greater change and astonish my client.

Anecdote: Yesterday, I went back to touch up a "Mendelssohn" (Aeolian) spinet (the one where I showed a photo of my bungee method of retaining drop action stickers in another thread), after pitch-raising it about a month ago. When I first worked on it, I resurfaced the hammers along with the pitch raise in hopes of giving it a little tone.

When I visited it yesterday, the owner, who is a fairly competent amateur musician, was practically in tears because, since I had worked on it, she could finally bear to let others even hear the piano. She told me about a friend being there and they played a duet on it, and the friend complimented the sound.

I made them happy, and the outcome exceeded their expectations. Kinda hard to do with a discriminating S&S B owner...