Serving So. California's pianos over 30 years

Dennis DeGroat Ashly is a Registered Tuner/Technician with the Piano Technicians Guild,the only organization that tests and qualifies Piano tuners in the States.

He has been a member of the Guild for the past 28 years, serving as a past president of the Santa Barbara chapter as well as being an officer in various other capacities over the years.

Raised to a great extent in a mom and pop piano shop in Kansas City Missouri, he had an early indoctrination to the inner workings of the piano, doing his homework in the back while mom and dad attended to the business. Dennis' mother specialized in replacing key tops on
older pianos and keeping the books while dad did much of the general repair, refinishing and moving. They had tuner/technicians doing the tuning, regulation and voicing.

Dennis recalls being called down quite regularly for being too noisy while they were trying to work. Still he thinks much of his natural ability at tuning was derived from listening to literally hundreds of
pianos being tuned over the course of his elementary years.

Thinking that learning to tune pianos might be a great way to work his way through college, Dennis took a job as an apprentice to a master tuner/ technician in Texas. A couple of years
later and probably still a bit green he embarked on a life long career studying and practicing the art of piano technology, soon becoming a concert level tuner/ technician in his own right
and establishing himself as a much sought after and often referred service person.

Now with 30 plus years in the trade he still takes great pleasure in breathing life back into these most wonderful of instruments, as well as greeting and meeting the needs of his customers throughout Ventura County.

- Tuning - First-time tunings often require what is called a "pitch adjustment", which basically entails going through the piano twice and runs $200. After that, regular tunings are $120 and are needed about once a year. Tuning typically takes around an hour to an hour and a half.

- Reconditioning - This general tune-up of the action (the working mechanisms of the piano) includes cleaning out dust and debris, tightening guide screws, lubricating the friction points, re-shaping the hammers, and minor regulation after reinstalling the action in the piano. A valuable and long-lasting service at $425,
which takes less than 2 weeks. (Tuning fee extra)

- Restringing - Replacing all the strings in a piano requires bringing the whole piano to our shop, but includes cleaning or refinishing the sounding board (hard to get to with the strings in), re-gilding the plate and hardware, replacing all the strings (including custom-built bass strings), and several tunings. This job can take up to 12 weeks and costs from $2000 to $3000, depending on the size of the piano.

- Sales - The instruments currently in our showroom range in price from $500 to $27,000. All used pianos have been reconditioned, and every sale includes delivery to a ground floor and your first tuning.

Repair & Restore -> Music Instruments