About Our Company

Short History
Inventronics was started by Dr. Albert E. Sanderson in 1972 to create electronics solutions for problems brought to Inventronics by outside corporations, modeled after a previous job when Albert was head of the Electronics Design Center at Harvard University. After problems developed with another manufacturer producing one of Al's designs, Al decided to go into manufacturing. Al started the new design of the Accu-Tuner, Henry Szmyt started the parts acquisition, and Paul Sanderson joined to get production up and rolling. In late 1981, early 1982 the first Accu-Tuners rolled out to complete the transition from a consulting firm to a company producing a product.

In the twenty-five years since, just over five thousand Accu-Tuners have been produced, but the same family values have carried through. Over the twenty-five year period other tuning instruments have come and gone, and some pretty libelous comparisons have been made. Inventronics has worked hard over the years to stick to our values not to compare or denigrate the competition.  
Expanded History

Commited to Product and Service Excellence
"Every piano is a puzzle," says Sanderson, "and what the technician does to bring out its best is under-appreciated. The Accu-Tuner solves the puzzle mathematically." Faced with background noise, cranky spinets, or repeat tunings of a single instrument, Sanderson's invention is a tool that pays off in saved time and consistent results. More than twenty years after licensing a manually operated precursor to his computerized Accu-Tuner, Sanderson continues to devote himself to the training and practice of piano technology. This year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Piano Technicians Guild, an international organization of individuals who tune, maintain, and rebuild the complex instruments. His collaboration with the guild resulted in its standardized certification test for piano tuners. He also serves as curriculum adviser to the piano technology department at Boston's North Bennet Street School, which offers one of the few full-time training programs for piano technicians in the United States.

Sanderson's love of pianos dates to his teens, when he took one apart and successfully reassembled it. He learned to play, but years passed before his avocation connected with his professional career in electronics. After earning his Ph.D. in applied physics, he stayed at Harvard to teach basic electronics and head the Electronics Design Center, which until 1973 provided consulting services and custom-designed equipment to University affiliates.

During that period, he attempted to tune his own five-foot Clarendon grand and came face to face with the effects of the instrument's inharmonicity - the acoustical property that changes the width of semitones along the keyboard. "The piano doesn't follow the conventional rules of music or physics," Sanderson explains.

Technological Breakthrough
"I measured the frequency of the notes, put them where they were 'supposed' to be, and the piano still sounded bad." This, he says, is the problem solved in practice each time a piano is tuned - and one he was determined to conquer theoretically. His quest began with a cigar box full of electronic components. To perfect his product, Sanderson studied privately with master technician Bill Garlick, former head of the piano technology department at North Bennet Street School. He developed aural skills while the skeptical Garlick served as a research subject. Ultimately both were convinced the box was ready to compete on the market. In 1976 Sanderson left Harvard to focus on the Accu-Tuner, which has since found its way to Italy, Australia, Indonesia, and to the Copenhagen Symphony.
Inventronics has a dozen patents that apply directly to piano tuning instruments and patents on designing bass strings. Discoveries made during the twenty years of research on inharmonicity have been the basis for most of the piano tuning instruments in use today.

Al Sanderson and Jim Coleman developed the Piano Technicians Guild Tuning Exam. The two men were selected for the project by then president of the PTG, Don Morton. The project was to devise a test that could be standardized for uniformity and fairness to the applicants. Al and Jim created a test and then traveled the US extensively giving the test to volunteers, getting sample data to present to PTG Exam committee. The exam was accepted by the PTG and although there have been revisions over the years, it is now the tuning exam for Registered Piano Technician membership to the PTG.

The Sanderson Accu-Tuner provided the standard for the PTG tuning test. Before the SAT there wasn't any means for automatically comparing the candidates tuning with the "Master Tuning" of the examiners. This advance allowed the tuning examiners to reduce the subjectivity of the exam and to reduce the math errors.

Family-owned and Operated
"As president and owner of Inventronics Inc., the company he runs with his wife, Mary, and son, Paul, Sanderson contemplates projects that will make quality tuning more accessible. And he hopes science will make more of an impact on the piano itself.

"Not much research has been done on actually improving or simplifying the product," he laments, "and the industry can get mired down in tradition."