This is the worst news you could have ever received. You hired a technician to come and tune and maybe repair your beloved piano, and after only a few minutes, they tell you it’s not possible.

This is very common, and I’ve explained in previous posts why your piano may not be tunable, but I’ve not touched on what happens after the technician leaves.

So the scenario is that the technician has advised you there is nothing to be done, and you’ll need a new piano or complete restoration. You should have paid them for their service, as this took time and experience. (An inexperienced technician may try to salvage a few things, only to break more things, and the whole thing comes undone at this point.) But after the tech leaves, the piano sounds worse than before. Why is that?

The best analogy for this can be described morbidly, but quickly. Imagine that there’s a person on the ground, and they look dead, so you call 911. A medical technician arrives, and they quickly check for vitals; no breathing, no pulse. So now they’re doing CPR and a few ribs are broken in the process, but eventually they stop and declare the subject deceased. But what about the ribs? Should the technician be responsible for repairing their ribs, even though they are dead? No. Never would this be expected.

This is very unfortunate, and hard to accept, but this is reality. I never want to expire a piano, it’s a very delicate subject because there is so much emotional attachment associated with a family heirloom. In order to make sure I’m doing the right thing, I have to do a full inspection, and in the process, sometimes things break. Or maybe the tuning doesn’t sound the same. In the end, it’s time to let go of the piano, to get a new one, or to fully restore the old one to its original glory. In either case, I hope I can help along the way.