Steinway & Sons Piano Service

Rick's piano rebuilding experience encompasses work on all components of the instrument, including re-stringing, bridge and soundboard repair/replacement, pin block replacement, keyframe and key manufacture, as well as complete action, underlever, and trap work repair, replacement, and regulation.

Within the the Piano Technicians Guild, he has served his Chapter (Washington D.C.), as President, Vice President and Secretary, as well as served on various committees locally and nationally.

He has also lectured at local, regional and national meetings on such subjects as Tuning, Voicing, Regulation and various aspects of Rebuilding. He also administers the Piano Technicians Guild written, tuning and technical examinations.

The Butler School of Piano Technology

With the advancement of Electronic Tuning Devices (ETDs) over the past 20 years, there has been a great decline in aural tuners. While ETDs can be used by aural tuners to help them produce high quality tunings, they can also be used by those who know little or nothing about the interval relationships used in aural tuning. In fact, many tuners could not tune a piano without one. The Butler School teaches aural tuning. The objective is to enable our students to pass the certification exam offered by The Piano Technicians Guild.

Students who pass the PTG tuning exam with a score of 90% or better in all categories are recognized as 'Certified Aural Tuners' by the Butler School of Piano Technology. www.thebutlerschool.org

Our Family

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The Butler family is very involved in piano service. My wife Patty works for Steinway Gallery as the Concert Artist Director. As such, she arranges for many of the major venues in town to have beautiful Steinway Grands for their performances. My brother Rodney is a Concert Artist Technician for Steinway here in Washington D.C. And, my brother Greg, my sons John and David are also piano technicians. They too have, and continue to have a connection with Steinway. They have successfully completed all of the training offered by Steinway at their New York factory.

Andre Watts - Peter Serkin - Marvin Hamlisch - Vardan Mamikonian - Christian Zacharias - Mikhail Pletnev - Gary Graffman - Laura Mikkola - Van Cliburn - John Tess - Oscar Peterson - Daniel Barenboim - John Eaton - Horacio Gutierrez - Andre Michel Shub - Ann Scheim - Jeffery Siegel - James Tocco - Emanuel Ax - Peter Nero - Alicia de Larrocha - Mischa Dichter - Cipa Dichter - Louis Lortie - Manacham Pressler - Evgeny Kissin - Richard Goode - Murray Perahia - Victor Borge - Alfred Brendel - Roger Williams - Jonathan Biss - Michele Camillo - Billy Taylor - Jon Nakamatsu - Yo Yo Ma - Benny Green - George Shearing - Tony Bennett - Jeffery Biegel - Yefim Bronfman - Frank Sinatra - Mavah Perlman - Ruth Laredo - Joseph Kalchstein - Isaac Stern - Lambert Orkis - John Browning - Harry Connick Jr. - Leon Fleisher - Lang Lang and others.