Anyone here tune pianos?

So I finished a course in piano tuning (college level) and after fumbling about the family wurlitzer piano with my wrench, I was wondering how many TB'ers here tune pianos on the side for money? Anyone?

 

The way my college works, there's a class offered about once every year to year and a half (depends sometimes if they have the money to front for the course) where my college's local piano tuner comes in and teaches a class. The attitude is a kind "the less students, the better", however the one I took there was fifteen students; not a lot of one on one time like the teacher likes so much.

You buy the supplies from the teacher. Most students write check. The teacher orders you a book, your choice of tuning wrench (I, for instance, chose the "most basic package" whereas some students got the jobbies with extendable wrench shaft, etc), felt, two hard rubber mutes (one large one small), and a peg to mount the mutes onto if you felt like.

The course is available to all class levels, provided they have a decent enough ear to tell intervals.

You have to listen to beats, learn about temperament of tuning (things like "fifths are tuned shy of beatless, thirds ring up to about 8 beats"), tune lots of unisons (everything from the middle of the range and up is paired in three strings per note, you have to learn to tune those single notes to themselves).

Then there's the fun (sarcasm there) study of "key physics". What effects hammer blow, letoff, overblow, reaction time, ..........basically everything in a single piano key that allows it to function. There's 56 parts for a grand key that interact, or 57 if it's an upright.

And so on and so forth this goes and you gotta do a whole bunhc of specialized listening and figuring out how the notes are. Oh and we got to write a brief essay for extra credit on something piano related. In my case, it was a brief history of steinway pianos.

 

it's nuts........by the end of the class i was thanking the heavens i owned an electric keyboard.