Sharpe & Flatte Piano Service

I'm back in operation! I wear gloves and a mask during my visit and keep disinfectant in my van which I use on my gloved hands between visits and whenever else it may be advisable. I suggest you also wear a mask and maintain distancing. Although the rate of infection in my service area is not significantly decreasing, it seems that long term solutions require us to resume some normal activities under precautionary procedures as much as we can while awaiting a vaccine or similar advances.

I miss your pianos! At midnight on March 16, 2020, my work became pretty much illegal due to COVID-19 regulations. Some might make exceptions, but I think it's in everyone's interest for me to stay out of my customers' homes until the infection rate recedes or other solutions become available. I'm tentatively preparing to resume work before or at the end of May, so right now I'm making a list of customers that want appointments. I'll call you as soon as I can be fairly cert...ain of a start date. Let me know if you want to be added to my list. When I resume, I plan to use a mask and rubber gloves, and to suggest that you and your family stay away from the piano for at least 24 hours before I arrive, and that we practice distancing from the beginning of the visit until the end. You may also wish to stay away from the piano for another 24 hours after I leave. The vast majority of people that have been infected with CV-19 have had mild cases. It's possible that I'm one of them, and that I had it in early March. But it wasn't serious enough to get tested, so I don't really know. If I did, I may now be immune, but I'm taking no chances, because I could still be a carrier. And if I didn't, I'd rather not risk getting it. Sorry so many of you are having to make do with untuned pianos, but I promise to give them the attention they deserve as soon as the restrictions are lifted. Stay safe!

I tuned the piano of one of my long time customers that I have known since the 1970s when we both worked at St. Mary's College. She told me that she had just celebrated her 90th birthday. I congratulated her and said, "I'll be very surprised if I make it that far." She was much more optimistic. "You'll make it that far, all right," she said. "And you'll still be tuning my piano."

Occasionally I have to give bad news to a client. I try to avoid it by trying to assess as much as possible over the phone and suggesting what the possible problem might be, and the costs. My nightmare is to hear "But you never told me..." which fortunately I haven't heard in many years. My second worst is that all my efforts fail, which is also pretty rare. Fortunately, today was not one of those days. There was plenty of reason to fear otherwise. The $85 piano from Go...odwill was one of Baldwin's experiments in how to make a piano as cheaply as possible. It had multiple problems, but most could be fixed fairly easily. The one thing that could not was that the entire set of original sticker grommets was made to last 25 years, while the piano was more than 50 years old. The solution was either to replace the grommets at a cost of hundreds of dollars or to show the customer how to return the stickers to their proper position when they popped out. He opted for the latter (until possibly later), so I was able to charge only $50 for all the fixes, on top of the tuning fee. That worked well for both of us.

Talk about challenges! Yesterday I was scheduled to do an installation of a pair of piano dollies on a roughly 100 year old Steinway upright in a church. Normally this is a 1.5 hour job, but this one took 4-5 hours. The reason is that this old Steinway is a former player piano and the widest upright I've ever seen. No piano dollies that I've ever seen would fit that piano. The solution was to fit the piano to the dollies, by cutting away part of the bottom board. Luckily,... the bottom board is a solid 1" thick and has a 2x2" beam across the front that didn't need to be cut. It was a lot of work, but the result was even nicer than on most pianos, because the entire mechanism was hidden under the piano. I didn't charge extra because neither the customer, a church with a tight budget, nor I was expecting the problem. If I see the problem again, I'll be able to anticipate and charge accordingly, but this time I'm just happy that it came out so well.