Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum It pays to use a qualified professional.

The problem is that the average person thinks that their child's piano teacher is a piano expert. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Often, students will look to their piano teacher for expertise in recommending a piano tuner. This expertise we welcome, especially when it's our telephone that rings. It's when piano teachers recommend a specific piano that we must walk a fine line. The challenge for techs is in learning how to work with the teacher when we believe he or she to be wrong. Further complicating matters is when a finders fee is on the line. This is not to say that we should acquiesce to a bad recommendation. Truth is always right. It's all about tact. Offend one piano teacher in word or deed and be prepared to lose her business as well as students, families, friends and neighbors. The piano-chain can be far lengthier than we think.

Sometimes the involvement of the piano teacher is quite innocuous. What often happens is that a teacher is asked to play "some pianos" to help with selection of a piano. A decent teacher can certainly express an opinion about touch and tone. That can be very helpful to parents who are non-players.

Thanks, Marty. Exactly. To the best of my recollection, all of my experiences with piano teachers in this regard were favorable. Some were just more challenging than others. It got really interesting when the piano student, parents, teacher and piano tech were joined by the various salespersons, dealers, siblings, best friend, et al. I think that's called a committee?

Now that, I'd love to see. (from a safe distance!)

"Experts"

When doing the recon on qualified professionals we will often encounter experts: the real, the perceived, and the self-proclaimed. Therefore, is it helpful to remember the following:

1. Experts deal with both facts and opinions.
2. Experts in some fields are much more reliable than experts in other fields.
3. Experts disagree enormously among themselves.
4. Experts in every field are very unreliable when they speculate about the future, or (under some circumstances) the past.
5. A surprisingly large number of experts have been caught deliberately deceiving the public.
6. Experts have very frequently been led astray when their emotions have become involved.
7. Experts have a regrettable tendency to exaggerate their own importance, and to persuade the public that they know more than they really do.
8. Non-specialists very often can - and do - make better decisions than experts, once the experts have stated the facts requiring a decision.

If you have any doubts about a professional recommendation, do not hesitate to get a second opinion.

Well, I've just about run out of old stories to tell.
[Hold your applause ]

If any other techs have something to share, please do so. Otherwise, I leave you with this link to the FAQ section of the PW Tech thread.

"Live long and shop wise."

How to find a good piano technician.


Addition to post #2168081 "Experts": The enumeration is attributed to Alan Hayward (M.Sc. [Eng.] Ph.D.)

Sorry, I missed this for a while.

Here's the thing. Dampp Chaser actually employs engineers and has had a continuous product development, testing and research effort for years.

I've heard the explanation from Damp Chaser people, but don't have it all in my head at the moment. But the main takeaway is that the continuous operation is deliberately selected for a purpose -- not a failure in design scope or a cheapened approach driven by the sharp-pencil folk in the office.

If I recall, the function of the humidistat is to sense the operation of the system, not to relate directly to the ambient humidity in the room. The system is so low power that it must function continuously in order to be effective -- even at small variations of room humidity from the ideal.

Additionally, the system works on a cycling percentage where even in high humidity situations, the humidifier might come on and in low humidity situations the heater bar may come on. It may be 90/10% or 40/60% but it does cycle. It does not at all work by just operating the humidifier until there is adequate moisture or operating the heater bar until things are dried out.

I'm afraid this is not a very complete explanation, but is the best I can do at the moment for an explanation that made sense when I heard it.

What I have been impressed with over the many years I have been installing the systems is that it DOES WORK. That data point should be seriously taken into consideration before suggesting "improvements".

Hope this helps . . .

Sounds good in theory, but humidistats are notorious for indifferent accuracy even when new, and quickly go out of calibration. Can a system sense small variations from ideal?



It's just an on/off humidistat, there's no microprocessor. I'd have to see this one to believe it. (and if you did have that kind of intelligence built in, it could have a dead band in the middle)

I've been impressed as well. When you check a tuning after 12 months and there's been very little change in the tuning, it's a pretty good indiction the system is working. I've seen this time and time again, piano after piano.

Devil's advocate here, and this is not a slam on the system itself, but it strikes me that this is not a data point in support.

If you checked it after 12 months, you checked it in the same season, with likely the same ambient temperature and humidity that you tuned it in. You don't really know if the system did anything.

If you checked it after 3, 6, and 9 months, that would be evidence.

If the soundboard moves a great deal during a twelve month period but the pitch happens to find its way back to where it was 12 months earlier, the unisons will be out of tune to show it.

I used '12 months' lightly. I've noticed stability after two, three, six months as well. The systems work amazingly well, as long as the piano isn't being blown on by an air conditioner or heat source of any kind.

Trouble is, I have tuned pianos that do not move much in 6, 7, or 8 years, let alone months, and that is without humidity control.

Absolutely. Also some that does move because too much humidity (near a river) despite 3 rods system and undercover.

It helps indeed but in light/moderate correction situation.

It is stupid that it hardly can be regulated when used in a place always on humid side or the opposite.

The goal could vary, I know the humidistat location can change a little the way it works, but a little intelligence in the box would be a must.

The ingenious Ingineers should think about that...

Notice that there is the mystics about it. Never techs note how the ih varies and customers seem to be discrete too.

Should be less marketing and more straightforward data.