Ron Kneale Piano Service

Wow! Up to my ears with keytop work. Five sets of keys in the shop at the same time. Time to get busy...

The PTG Conference was held at the historic Union Station hotel, Saint Louis. It's absolutely one of the most unique hotels I've stayed at for a PTG Conference. It was originally one of the largest, if not THE largest, railway station in all of North America. It was converted to a hotel in the mid 1980's and underwent a major renovation in 2010. Every night we could watch this very cool 3D water and fire show.

Waiting for my flight home at St. Louis airport after attending another great Piano Technicians Guild conference. It was very well attended and jam packed with activities. I was, however, able to make it to the famous Gateway Arch one evening. Completed in 1965 and standing over 600 feet tall, it's really impressive up close. They shine multicolored lights on it at night that reflect off of the stainless steel walls... very cool!

This Steinway K-52 rebuild is finally finished! The new owner is ecstatic. I did pretty much everything to the interior that was needed, including restringing, bridge reconditioning, all new action parts, pedals and trapwork, key bushings, ivory key restoration and of course lots of regulation and tuning.

He and I will refinish the case together in the near future, since he is a custom cabinet builder and awesome wood finisher himself.

Just attended a John Lennon tribute concert at the Fox Theater in Riverside. I tuned the house Steinway concert grand piano earlier today for the performance tonight. The show was great and I was reminded of the genius of Lennon's art!

All in a days work. Just putting the piano player back to work after tuning this Yamaha player piano. The owners got creative using this dummie to sit at the piano while it's playing away. This guy's a hit at parties!

Spent all day yesterday at Cal Baptist University servicing five Yamaha pianos for up coming recitals including this "Black Beauty". One of two CFIII concert grands, this one has a particularly beautiful 5th and 6th octave where much of the melody is typically played.

Just killing time at Fresno airport on my way home from another excellent WESTPAC conference in Seattle, WA. As typical, I learned a bunch of new piano techie stuff. Does this make me worth more?

Feeling all alone. The parking lot is totally empty. I think I'm the only one in the music building at CBU, tuning pianos. At least it's nice and quiet

Wow, this is amazing. Sounds like a small chamber ensemble. I would really like to know how this thing works!

Listen to the instrument da Vinci invented but never got to hear Polish pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki spent more than 5,000 hours making da Vinci's idea a reality. Watch this performance of a single instrument that almost sounds like a chamber ensemble.

Spent the last four days attending a Performance Piano Training Seminar at Yamaha in Buena Park. Wow, it was challenging and enlightening. Our "three teachers for six students" ratio allowed for plenty of personal time with each of these High level piano technicians.

Ace Ugai from Yamaha Japan was amazing - a true master of his craft! He taught us the concept of tuning for projection and room size. I would never have even thought that the tuning can affect how well a piano can project sound. Ace insisted that this should be our top priority when tuning a piano for any concert venue. This abstract concept will take many me years to perfect.

We also learned some great factory techniques for grand piano regulation and spent most of our time perfecting the regulation on each of our individual Yamaha C3x grand pianos. We started with out-of-the-box new instruments and over four days worked at transforming them into concert level pianos.

All of us had a great time and everyone at Yamaha treated us like "Gold". What a privilege it was to have been invited to attend this training. I am grateful for the knowledge gained and look forward to applying what I learned.

Thank You Yamaha!

The "Modern piano technician". Swapping out a circuit board on a Yamaha Disklavier player piano. Yamaha's player pianos combine a standard acoustic piano with a modern digital player system. They record and playback with "scary" precision - mistakes and all. And the coolest thing - they can play the pianist part in real time from a live concert. For example, you can watch an Elton John concert on tv, and what he plays will play live on your disklavier piano!

Had a great time these last four days while attending WestPAC V in Ontario, CA. learned a ton of new "piano geek" stuff and got to hang out with some of my old buds. Plus I treated myself to a new tuning hammer - made with a gorgeous maple burl handle!

Yesterday, I had the rare opportunity to tune a piano at the Lake Norconian clubhouse. This venue is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, and was once considered the greatest recreational resort ever built on the west coast. Originally built in the 1920's, it was then a very popular resort for celebrities and movie stars including Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Will Rogers, Buster Keaton, Bing Crosby, and even Babe Ruth. Hit hard by the great depression, it closed its doors in 1941, and was purchased by the U.S Navy on December 8, 1941 (one day after Pearl Harbor).

Today, much of it has been left to ruins. In 2002, the state of California deemed the old hotel building seismically unfit and despite the buildings history, architecture, landmark status and multiple recommendations to the contrary, deemed a retrofit too expensive and ordered the old hotel abandoned. Recently, the non-profit Lake Norconian Club Foundation filed suit to stop "demolition by neglect" of the Lake Norconian Club.

Every year, for the past fifteen or so, the choir at Ayala High puts on a four night musical program called "Madrigal Feaste". The students and teachers really go all out as they transform the multi -purpose room into a renaissance themed show. I've had the priviledge of tuning their "Estonia" grand piano for the past three years for the event.

I don't often do ivory repair. But when I do, I prefer using AcryliKey (Lol). This method is the best way I know to repair chips in ivory keytops. Here are two keys I recently repaired. Both had good sized chips along the front edge. Zoom in to see a pretty darn close color match.

August is CBU month. California Baptist University is now a client of mine. With around fifty Yamaha pianos, I spend the better part of August getting them whipped into shape - just in time for the start of Fall semester. All of the pianos are grand pianos, including two CFIII concert grands. They are all less than ten years old. I'll revisit them all again in December... sweet gig!

I love working on great instruments. The rewards are so good. This 30 great old Yamaha concert grand was in desperate need of some TLC. I worked on its action in my shop for two days, then on site for three days. The work included rebushing keys, re-pinning center pins, action regulation, and voicing. Oh yea, and I tuned it. The results - smokin'.

A sad day at a beautiful church. Today I tuned the 7 foot Baldwin grand for the funeral of recent UCSB shooting victim Katie Cooper. This innocent young woman grew up in Chino Hills and was just two weeks away from graduation. My youngest daughter, Lindsay is the same age and competed against her in rival high school dance team competitions. This hit close to home for me.