[CAUT] Advice for achieving stability sooner?

[Ed Sutton]

This from Richard Davenport about tuning the Fazioli backscale, which tends 
to support what you say.

It's not a matter of cents. It's a matter of hammer technique, using the 
correct tuning technique and string length. I can categorically deny you 
need to pull any unison 40 cents sharp on a Fazioli if you're using the 
proper techniques. Tuning stability would be impossible if that were the 
case. It's the momentary "heavy shock" (flexing the pin) followed 
immediately by relaxing the pin again. It's not necessary to move the pin if 
you're experienced. Many times the unison remains in tune after "flexing" 
the duplex sharp. I use a firm test blow in conjunction with the flex. 
Believe me, it moves every time. If it's a small amount flat, rub the string 
in the speaking length and the duplex will go slightly sharp.

>
>
> I think it's pretty much got to be coming from the back scale, through the 
> bridges. I find this most with Yamahas (the only Asian pianos I get to 
> tune with any regularity) after even a slight pitch increase. One good 
> whack drops pitch quite a bit, after which it's quite docile. It also 
> happens yearly, under the wrong humidity cycle conditions, so I don't see 
> any way it could be strings straightening around terminations. American 
> pianos do it too, but it's a lot harder to make it happen. Perhaps the 
> differences between bridge pin plating and resulting friction. Another 
> clue that it's coming from the back scale is that it doesn't happen in the 
> bass or tenor, where the strings are long and heavy and the back scales 
> proportionately short. In the treble sections, the speaking lengths are 
> short and light, with proportionately long back scales (all of it, not 
> just tuned duplex). It's the same phenomenon that accounts for a half 
> semitone pitch raise showing ragged unisons a couple of weeks afterward in 
> spite of sounding pretty good when you left it. Strings creep across 
> bridges all the time with temperature and humidity changes, never quite 
> matching back scale tensions with the front scale, but always trying. 
> Nothing ever stands still. Everything is always on the way to somewhere 
> else.
> Ron N