In addition to what the others have said, I would ask the stakeholders (faculty, dealer) to define what their expectations of "stable" are and give them your thoughts about how realistic their expectations are. My first thought in response to your question was "never". Then I read on that you have the D/C half systems installed. That should cut the time to 3 or 4 years unless you can tune them about once a month the first year. I also use Fred's analogy of the guitar or violin. But even more obvious and specifically relevant is it is like putting a single new string on a concert grand that you touch up every day for a month compared to a new string on a piano you see once a year. Someone there should be able to relate to that. I have a similar college situation, although they aren't fussing over it - or at least they haven't mentioned it to me. A small private college has bought some 15 or more new Yamaha P22s as well as 4 Yamaha grands over the past 5 years and never once have they devoted any money to tuning the P22s in the practice rooms or classrooms. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the dealer never even tuned them. The neglected new pianos are now at least 50 cents low and if they ever do decide to spend the money to tune them, it will be a big catch up job. Jeff Tanner ----- Original Message ----- From: Diane Hofstetter To: College and University Technicians Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 7:51 AM Subject: [CAUT] How long to stabilize?? 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/20090219/2f1cb9c6/attachment-0001.html>
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