Thank you Fred! I haven't heard about the unison skew factor before--interesting, I will have to start measuring that. Your description of the three pianos of different ages is great! I remember an old upright once that hadn't been tuned in 17 years. It actually didn't need a pitch-raise. I was astounded. I have started the educational process, but it is a long one. Diane Hofstetter From: fssturm at unm.edu To: caut at ptg.org Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:06:34 -0700 Subject: Re: [CAUT] How long to stabilize?? Hi Diane, There is an education process you will need to go through - educating your faculty and administration. The general misconception is that "It's a new piano, so it should stay in tune better than our old ones," which is, unfortunately, absolutely the opposite of true. First, there is the initial year. It can help to talk about replacing a string on a violin, guitar, etc, and how that takes a good while to settle. And note that the same happens with a piano, and actually to less of an extent, but with the violin you are tuning it every day, and many times the first few days. With the piano you are having unrealistic expectations if you think a new one will stay in tune over the first year - it's gradual shift, but quite noticeable from week to week and month to month. After the first year, the new piano will adjust to humidity swings (ie, go out of tune) more than an older one, because the wood is newer. I have three D's, 8, 27, and 45 years old. No question which is the most stable - 45 - next most - 27 - and least - 8. They are all "stable" but the newer one will have worse unisons after a rain, etc. Same is true of studios. Older ones tend to be somewhat more stable, as a rule of thumb (though there is a lot of individual variance). And it is quite possible that the UST may sound worse when out of tune (from humidity) than the piano it replaces, due to more of the "unison skew" factor, where left and right strings move in opposite directions in the treble (as the most obvious symptom). So you have to talk to them, and lay it out. "No, the new pianos are fine. They are acting normally. This is what you can expect" (and why). When it comes to how often to tune, that's a question of setting priorities and matching resources (time and money) to the situation. Spreading the suffering around in an even manner once the top priorities have been met the best they can be. I have been through times when I simply abandoned certain practice room uprights for a couple years - they'd be in tune, more or less, when they got back to the time of year I had last tuned them. Then I'd cycle them back into the schedule and cycle others out. You do what you have to do. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu On Feb 18, 2009, at 5:51 AM, Diane Hofstetter wrote: I know many of you have written in the past about the problems with tuning stability in brand new loaner pianos from manufacturers. Fortunately the college where I am tuning has purchased these pianos, so they won't disappear just when we get them settled in. However, my question is this; in a practice room in a small college, how long, or how many tunings do you think it will take for the school's new Kawai UST-9's to stabilize in tuning? The pianos were delivered directly to the college from the warehouse and uncrated there. Before that they spent two days in the truck. It was snowing outside. They have Dampp Chaser heating rods and HD humidistats installed, but my data logger, which was in their new Boesendorfer between December 4 and February 4, showed nothing but too dry. Every time I have tuned in the practice rooms, my humidity gauge reads 36-38% RH. I do expect the humidity to go up to around 60% in the spring. Each piano has received one pitch adjustment--usually pitch raises, but two of them took lowering--and one tuning since the beginning of February when they were delivered. Already I want to tune a couple of them again, but this is not in the budget or mindset of either the store that sent me out or the college who now owns the pianos. They all think the tunings should be stable already. Experienced opinions gratefully received! Diane Hofstetter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090218/0b09957f/attachment.html>
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