On Aug 11, 2010, at 2:10 PM, Paul T Williams wrote: > I went over to one of our venues and lowered the pianos from A-444 > to 440. It's so humid, that everything is sticking. Soft pedal > action wont return the action to rest (temp fix: loosen the cheek > block screws) Lots of squeeks and groans I've never heard from > these instruments before. Since they get moved so much, I can't > really get a DC on them. > > It's supposed to relax starting this Friday. School starts a week > from Monday and it starts up with a bang! > > Should I hold off til next week or trudge into it now? First > recital in 2 weeks. Yep, late summer early fall is the worst time of year most places. Here, every single piano is quite sharp and unusably out of tune with itself, raucous and nasty. I start in four weeks before semester, running through all the pianos. The tuning doesn't hold real well, but it is a lot better starting point than if I started later -in which case I'd never catch up. They are still absorbing moisture and going sharp through September, so what I do early will go sharp and come back in about October, which makes it better than if I tune at the top of the moisture content. The critical pianos I'll be seeing often enough to keep them up. About the cheekblocks binding the keyframe, you could install adjustable guides, but it's easier to just insert a paper shim in summer and pull it out when it gets dry. Take a sticky note, cut the sticky part into a strip and apply it to the bottom of the cheekblock. That way it stays in place for the season while you pull the action. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Brecht -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100812/df776f77/attachment-0001.htm>
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