Hello all,  The original owner of our shop, Mr. George Schindhelm,
was a descendant (son) of the original Schindhelm brothers who owned
the Schindhelm Klavier Fabrik in (East) Germany.  They later joined
Dietmann to become Dietmann pianos.

Mr. Schindhelm always told me that a tuner who is worth his salt has
to tune at least 10000 pianos.  In our shop, all our tuners were proud
to state that they had done 10000 pianos and much more (!).  The
average tuner did six to ten pianos a day, covering school pianos,
universities, homes, concert halls, etc.  I have personally stood next
to each of them, countless times over years, watching and learning.

None of them ever pounded keys anything like it was mentioned here
earlier.  They seemed to have a technique that involved pressing the
keys alternating between really softly and then loud while handling the
tuning hammer.  Our concert tuner always used to press they key loud
and immediately really soft thereafter.  He used to breathe in a sort
of nasal way while doing this.

I can only say that they were all great tuners and I still have now,
13 years later, a piano here that one of them tuned and it is still
good.  As for broken keys, Mr. Schindhelm once explained to me that
piano keys break when people play with their feet.  :-)

Best regards,
Bernt Damm
Sydney