The Great Chicago Tune-Off (from 1997)
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I saw this on Facebook, it’s an article from a 1997 issue of the Piano Technicians Journal. They had two veteran tuners tune two side-by-side pianos, one aurally and one with an ETD, and then had listeners do a blind listening test. I would imagine there are more recent tests like this with more recent technology, but I thought this was a fun read nevertheless. It almost made me wonder if this magazine is still in publication (perhaps online?)
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Yup, it is still published, but only to Piano Technician Guild members. I dropped my membership years ago.
There have been a few "tune-offs" over the years - some between equal temperament and alternates and others between competing electronic tuning devices. (I hosted/ran one of those for the Chicago chapter years ago, using a number of Baldwin school upright pianos - notoriously difficult scale design for devices to calculate a decent tuning)
One note about the first tune-off: I studied a bit with Virgil Smith and I don't think he ever 'just' tuned a piano he didn't also spend time with the voicing.
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Yup, it is still published, but only to Piano Technician Guild members. I dropped my membership years ago.
There have been a few "tune-offs" over the years - some between equal temperament and alternates and others between competing electronic tuning devices. (I hosted/ran one of those for the Chicago chapter years ago, using a number of Baldwin school upright pianos - notoriously difficult scale design for devices to calculate a decent tuning)
One note about the first tune-off: I studied a bit with Virgil Smith and I don't think he ever 'just' tuned a piano he didn't also spend time with the voicing.
@Rontuner said in The Great Chicago Tune-Off (from 1997):
There have been a few "tune-offs" over the years - some between equal temperament and alternates and others between competing electronic tuning devices. (I hosted/ran one of those for the Chicago chapter years ago, using a number of Baldwin school upright pianos - notoriously difficult scale design for devices to calculate a decent tuning)
Cool! I would love to have heard some of those!
One note about the first tune-off: I studied a bit with Virgil Smith
Oh cool! I figured you might know about this but I should have known you would actually know them!
Am I remembering correctly that you are semi-retired now? Or are you fully retired? Or am I fully wrong?
Did you have anyone take over your clients?
I had this story on Piano Tell and it’s turned into a discussion of how hard it is to find a tuner now.
I might have mentioned that my current turner is the retired head technician for the music school here. He is amazing. His tunings make my piano sounds great glorious and the tunings seem to last forever. But he’s probably closer is indeed semi-retired and will eventually fully retire. And then I can only hope that I’ll be able to find someone else who’s even remotely close to his capabilities.
The dwindling number of tuners always makes me very sad.
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I still work most days, just shorter hours - maybe 10-2, though this time of year I'm squeezing in some extra tunings. Here in Chicago, there is a pretty good mix of older and younger techs available, so I've suggested some of my clients farther away try other techs (I send a couple of names) as I reduce my daily travel distance.
I'm still picking up new clients, most seem to be finding me from Facebook local groups. I switched to an online scheduling system a few years ago and it has made my business life so much easier!
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I still work most days, just shorter hours - maybe 10-2, though this time of year I'm squeezing in some extra tunings. Here in Chicago, there is a pretty good mix of older and younger techs available, so I've suggested some of my clients farther away try other techs (I send a couple of names) as I reduce my daily travel distance.
I'm still picking up new clients, most seem to be finding me from Facebook local groups. I switched to an online scheduling system a few years ago and it has made my business life so much easier!
@Rontuner nice, that’s great!
I would imagine that a big city like Chicago will alway be better able to support more tuners than the smaller cities and towns.
Also, not important but in my post above, I meant to write “ I would love to have heard some of those!” (Not “I would drive to have heard…” silly autocorrect!
I edited it of course!) -
The guy who tunes my piano is from the Denver area. That is and hour and a half away. He comes up to tune for the National Repertory Orchestra, which is in Breckenridge. Then he comes to my place. I think he is 80.
My piano needed tuning in October. The orchestra only exists in the summer. No tuning.
There are several pianos in the county. Hopefully enough to keep a tuner coming up.
