In his massive and perhaps revolutionary book on tuning, Brian Capleton goes to great lengths to show that we rarely "eliminate" beats, but mostly "attentuate" them in many ways, sometimes by careful analysis and action, and often by just trying and trying again until we have made it better enough to move on. Considering this, if I am "stuck" on a unison, and use my magic "X" procedure to improve a false beating string, then go back and try again, and find that now it sounds better, I may never know if my "X" really changed the string behavior, or if it helped me to try harder, and that time i got better results. Ed Sutton ----- Original Message ----- From: David Love To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 2:41 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Thank you for Stability advice The placebo effect refers generically to the patient believing that a fix has been administered. It doesn't need to be medical necessarily and has application in this work often. Also, a twenty percent "cure" rate is pretty darn good considering it's a sugar pill. In our line of work have you ever had a customer complain about a note just after you've completed a tuning and you go to the piano only to find nothing wrong with it and so you futz around a bit and say ok now try it and they do and it's "perfect". Well I've never done that J but I've heard of it and apparently it can work! Placebo effect. Why should strings need to be encouraged to touch the bridge surface when you have bridge pins at a 20 degree angle clamping them to the bridge. If the bridge is indented at the edge from aggressive string seating or cycles of expansion and squeezing the string against the bridge pin and the bridge top I suppose a massage of the string might push it down against the bridge surface temporarily, but it's likely to be pretty temporary. I would argue that that the undeniable, audible improvement in tone that comes from strings not making contact with the bridge is a false premise. With positive bearing (and even without) and bridge pins at reasonable angle the strings don't need encouragement to touch the bridge surface. They can hardly avoid it. The acute bend in the string leaving the bridge pin is another matter and if you are in doubt as to that then a gentle massaging of the string toward the bridge pin, not down toward the cap, can help the termination in the same way that a gentle lifting of the string at the capo or agraffe does. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Stan Kroeker Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 8:25 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Thank you for Stability advice The placebo affect, as I'm sure you know David, is a medical phenomenon, and only accounts for 20 percent of 'cures'. Are you suggesting that undeniable, audible improvement in tone and tuning clarity cannot be attributed to strings not making full contact with the bridge? What is your preferred technique for encouraging strings to actually touch the bridge surface? Regards, Stan Kroeker, RPT On 8-Feb-10, at 9:14 AM, David Love wrote: The placebo effect is very real. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com Ok, so now I am a bit confused. Hopefully the strings do not need/require seating. But, if they do...well why not? I have mixed advice/opinions but in my limited 40 year experience(s) most of the time there is an audible improvement as well as improving stability. I am under the impression that one can over do the seating process and certainly the overall bearing is a consideration. We have a new Baldwin SF (about 5years new) that had similar issues and notable almost zero bearing. You could almost see the bridge under the strings as they crossed the bridge. And the professor remarked "what did you do...it sounds so much better". The tuning frequency has also decreased. Any similar experiences, comments, or opinions. Henry Nicolaides Piano Technician, School of Music Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100208/500874fb/attachment-0001.htm>
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