Bechstein model B tuning stabilityHi Geoffrey, I have a private client who has a Bechstein B in their home and I have seen quite a few changes in it over the years. The piano is now sixteen years old. When it was new and for about the first eight or so years the tuning stability was not good at all no matter what was done. The piano was used from about two to six hours a day, sometimes more. I would tune the piano every three months. I also tuned their Petroff which would hardly need any work and had ten times the tuning sability of the Bechstein. After a while the Bechstein tuning stability got better and now it needs tuning only twice a year. I have found out one thing about Bechsteins from my personal experience and I don't know if it is just me or it really is the instruments. I tune for a university that has two model EN 9'2" Bechsteins. I have found that I get better tuning stability if I use different tuning technics with them. The one in the concert hall I tune one way and the one in the recital hall I tune a different way and they stay in tune better. If I tune both the same way, one will not have the tuning stability that the other one has. When I tune the B in my client's home, I use a different technic. It seems strange but it works. God bless Bill Balmer, RPT University of Findlay and Ohio Northern University In a message dated 10/15/09 19:22:31 US Eastern Standard Time, g.pollard at usyd.edu.au writes: I’m interested to hear from anyone who has any 3 –5 year old Bechstein model Bs in heavy use, and would care to share your experience of tuning stability in this piano. I’m having severe unison drift in the lower capo section (10 – 15 strings/up to 5 cents/individual strings within the trichord) within 10 days of tuning; remainder of the piano is rock solid. We have 10 Bechsteins and the ones giving trouble are in keyboard teaching rooms and get heavy student use outside teaching hours. Other pianos in these rooms ( S&S B and Yam C5) are stable. I have diagnosed rendering problems due to a steep-ish approach angle to the capo. I’m now 2 months into a regime of revisiting fortnightly to rectify just the unisons, with a major focus on hammer technique. They are still not stable. Also happy to talk off list, thanks, Geoffrey Pollard GEOFFREY POLLARD | Piano Technician SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC C41, MACQUARIE STREET, SYDNEY. 2000 T 61 2 9351 1221 | F 61 2 9351 1287 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091017/413898ae/attachment.htm>
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