Ron Kneale Piano Service

08/05/2017

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

07/16/2017

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.

07/16/2017

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!

06/21/2017

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.

11/20/2016

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!

06/04/2016

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!

04/16/2016

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.

04/04/2016

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?

12/23/2015

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

07/21/2015

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

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.

06/27/2015

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!