Nice job Isaac ... One of the best tuning examples I have heard here .... was beginning to think that good tuners were in danger of being overtaken by the new "Russian" method !!

Did you use cardboard in the wrest pins and a plactrum

Seriously though, don't get wound up by others, and if that is an example of the quality of your tuning ... you should regard your work an excellent example for others to aspire to match.

That's a lot of breakage. I really don't think that's par, even for a heavily used concert grand! I've got grands at the colleges that haven't broken a single string over 20-30 years. Yes, the concert instruments too.

Be nice. We were all in the learning stage at one time. I bet if we could go back and listen to our beginning tunings, we'd be horrified.

As for radical techniques, the use of CA glue on pinblocks was at one time considered unacceptable and raised a lot of eyebrows, while it's now common place.

Never at that level, I promise you !

Never seen the use of CA here ! and I dont wish to try that a piano is repaired or not.

I guess we'll take your word for it.

Today I returned to a little Whitney spinet piano that I serviced over a year and a half ago. On my first visit it had not been tuned since 1990 and averaged 150c flat. On the last visit I brought it up to pitch using the overpull feature in Tunelab. I had thought that on my visit today, I was certain that I would have to do another pitch raise. To my amazement it was pretty much exactly where I left it a year and a half ago. Just a few unisons to touch up here and there. I was amazed!!!!!

I know Whitney's have a bad rap, but on occasion I've seen perfectly good ones that play well and stay in tune. I think if a piano was regularly tuned when new, before the neglect started, they tend to hold a pitch raise better. I base this on tuning notes from previous techs. On the other hand, a piano delivered flat to the customer and never tuned can be pitch raised some 20 years later, and still not be stable. In that case, the piano may need several tunings to become stable.

Yesterday afyer having worked a little in the wokshop (put back in place a vertical plate) I made a small video showing tuning "ruthm" and posture to tune unisons.





CHecks or paypal gift accepted !

Used the tilter to tip a piano on its back for some CA treatment. Tipping the piano is not one of my favorite jobs, but this one was not heavy, compared to most. Another successful resurrection of an otherwise useless piano!

This was yesterday, not today, but I only just got around to posting this.

A DIY Gone Horribly Wrong

A friend told me one of his neighbors had a baby grand he had set out to refinish himself - he's a handyman - but had now decided finishing the job wasn't in the cards for him, and was looking for someone to give the piano to. I went to check it out. It was a 1935 Starr, and I believe formerly had a reproducing action. It was sitting out in the driveway when I drove up.



It turns out he'd started and abandoned this project some 20 or so years ago, and yes, he stripped EVERYTHING. And yes, that's the pin block at the bottom of the photo. Wait! Where's the plate??? Oh, there it is! Leaning against a wall of the garage!



He removed and saved the old tuning pins, and the strings were saved in rusty bundles in the void between the lid and the case, along with half the damper action and all of the dampers.

He said it had sustained some water damage. At least half of the veneer was peeling off, and all of the ferrous metal parts were covered with rust.

I told him I wasn't equipped to do this level of work at this time. He was quite proud of what he'd done, and how he'd preserved it as well as he did. I didn't have the heart to tell him that if it hadn't been junk before he started, it was now.

Anyone in the market for some firewood?

I was all ready to ask you for contact info for this piano...then I noticed it's missing some sharps. So, no deal!

That missing white on E4 is a deal breaker for me.