>Apparently the dealer indicated to the customer that special >considerations of some sort were required when tuning a Bluthner, so >they needed a tech who had the correct training and equipment. Equipment? <grin> An extra rubber mute .... It's simple, really, just mute off three of the four strings (using two rubber or felt wedges), then add in the other two main strings while still keeping the fourth muted off. Then pluck the fourth, get it roughly in tune with the main unison, and tweak it a little till you get the best resonance and timbre. Pluck one more time to be sure it hasn't strayed off the main pitch. Once you've done the four-string section, it doesn't hurt to listen to each note carefully again, and reset any that don't match or have changed. After you've tuned the piano a few times it should settle in and not need babying. It was my experience doing repeated tuning of new Bluethners for a two-piano seminar lasting a few days, that once you get the fourth string really set in tune, it almost seems to act as some kind of tuning reservoir to keep the others from straying under heavy playing. Just get it all set up solid and true as you can, and it seems to acquire extra stability over ordinary unisons. Thinking about the fourth string as I tuned them over and over, it seems to me that Bluethner didn't add it to get more volume. Rather, if you listen to the first three without the fourth, the timbre sort of goes white, like when really clear strings are tuned EXACTLY to each other? They seem to cancel out some of each other's sound? And then you add the fourth, and the sort of messy front termination adds a little bit of wildness to it all, so it sings. Susan Kline OSU, Newport Arts Center -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090723/f84da82b/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC