On 12/16/2010 1:23 PM, David Love wrote: > Can you explain why a “smash” would be more stabilizing than a normal > test blow? How do you know that the smash didn’t destabilize the pitch > so that the next time you hit the note it won’t go out of tune? It’s > counterproductive. Once the pin and the string segments are in > equilibrium or stasis no further smashing of the piano will make them > more stable. > > David Love This appears to be a variant of the way too common misinterpretation of "pounding". Jim's description seems to be of the most common. It's not a tuning technique, or shouldn't be. It's a test of the tuning technique that got you to this test. I almost said something about it a few days ago when someone mentioned pounding a tuning in. That's exactly the wrong approach. You don't pound a tuning in. Any pounding done is an attempt to knock the tuning out, to find out how you did. It's a small flash of light into a big dark place, that might just tell you something important. The "smash" doesn't stabilize a piano, it's just a committee test blow after the fact. It also won't destabilize pitch any more than a test blow does, and won't cause a note to go out of tune the next time it's played any more than will a test blow. It's a diagnostic tool that, like a test blow, is one of the very very few indicators we have of how close we got to equalizing segment tensions during the tunings. Ron N
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