Hi Daniel, Our recital hall at S Carolina experienced very similar results as those you observed. My tuning time in the hall was originally first thing in the morning as had been established by my predecessor. It didn't take me long to learn that what I tuned in the morning had often dissipated by the time the recitals began at 4:30. In response to your statement below, I'd like to throw in my observations. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your perspective. In South Carolina, we really never experience a gradual change in humidity. It's not there one day, the next day it is here, and here to stay (except for during the school year, of course, which can reveal 55% today, 27% tomorrow, 48% the next, etc). But once the end of the school year rolls around, we've generally and literally jumped to 60%+ RH (in the humidity "controlled" recital hall -- rooms with no humidity control and occupants who sweat profusely at 65 degrees would see RH as high as 80%RH and just below), and it remains there until late in the fall semester, when it simply nosedives after Thanksgiving just in time for juries. What I observed during the summer months in the recital hall, even after a month or so at the upper end of the humidity range, is that the pitch continued to climb, even having "stabilized" the instruments for a week during July for a piano festival. The pitch continued to creep upward through September before it began to stabilize, and that perhaps only because we were tuning again on a regular basis, holding the pitch down. I also observed one occasion in the recital hall when I felt and smelled the humidifier come on during a tuning. I watched as my hygrometer lying on the piano began to change numbers like tenths digit on my car's odometer going down the interstate. I also could measure the pitch changes minute by minute as the humidity increased. I stopped tuning, put my tools in my bag, and went and reported the obvious malfunction. So, I'm not quite sure what you mean by 3 days. Jeff Tanner ----- Original Message ----- From: Daniel Gurnee To: Ed Sutton ; caut at ptg.org Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:33 Subject: Re: [CAUT] Detuning phenomenon; was: How long to stabilize?? Humidity wise, it has been generally understood that humidity will affect wood by three days. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090220/1694266e/attachment-0001.html>
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