An anecdote: I have a client, a professional singer and voice teacher, who has a Heintzman console. Typically, the piano is about 30 cents sharp in late August/early September, and about the same amount flat in January/February. This is NOT when I want to see the piano, however, it is when my client wants to see me. The problem is, if I tune the piano in April or May, it will sound pretty dreadful by the end of August. Also, she is away for most of the summer and doesn't want to get it tuned only a month before going away. She wants it tuned just before lessons start, hence right about now. By January, of course, the piano is awful and I get a call. Since she is a singer and voice teacher, I have always just assumed that=20 A-440 was imperative. That is until two years ago in August when I suggested that leaving the piano a little bit sharp (acutally 10c!)might mitigate the extreme change in the winter. To my surprise, she had no objection, and when I returned the following January, I found only the center section to be very flat, saving me much work and the piano much stress. <BTW> She's just not interested in a Dampp-Chaser system as I can't promise her that the piano will need fewer tunings as a result of installing one. The point is, this fork or float thing does not lend itself to absolutes. It seems to me that there's a computation involving the needs of the client, what works best for the piano, and what works best for the technician--in that order. =20 I agree with Bill that the fall and spring are the best times of the year for the piano (less stress) and the technician (less stress) however, does the client get the most 'milage' out of these tunings? A piano tuned at this time of year won't begin to sound really awful (to the client) until January. A piano tuned a couple of months from now, at the 'ideal' time, will also begin to sound pretty bad at around the same time. I once had the experience of tuning a piano in late April, only to have the client call me back about six weeks later complaining that it didn't hold its tune very well. Sure enough, the center was way sharp and the bass was right there at pitch. I'm sure that had I tuned this piano in February, it still would have been the middle of June when the client noticed a change. I just finished going through about 20 pianos at the Conservatoire here in Montr=E9al, most of which are in studios that double as teaching and practice space. I tuned most of them to where they seemed to want to be (within reason). I've never gotten a complaint about a piano being too sharp, though if it's flat, I hear about it. So, I let 'em float in the warm seas of summer and freeze 'em at A-440 in the ice of winter. I did find that: 1. Pianos in air conditioned rooms do a lot better than the ones in un-air conditioned rooms. 2. Two Steinway 'B's in the same air conditioned room, with almost consecutive serial numbers (one's ....57 and the other's ....59) both tuned at the same time in the spring, varied in pitch by about 5 cents one to the other---so go figure.=20 Aaron Aaron Bousel =20 Ormstown, QC Canada abousel@rocler.qc.ca
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