> I seem to be, in yet again another way, a dinosaur here. I tune _very_ > hard. Dear Greelosaurus Rex, I'm with you on how pleasant it is for a tuner to sit in the audience and hear nothing but music. No SPAANNNG or tick-tick or wah-wah-wah. I don't think many people would argue against hard _test_ blows, but I think the discussion has been about hard blows to do the actual tuning. My goal is to have good enough lever technique to be able to tune with light blows, then have the [very hard] test blow do nothing whatsoever. Obviously it doesn't always work, but most of the time; often enough that it saves major wear on the ears and fingers, and I suppose a little on the piano as well. As has been previously mentioned, there is on some pianos the phenomenon of a test blow hard enough to pull enough string temporarily through the bearing points that the string goes sharp over the next minute or two, so there's the tradeoff (my favorite word concerning pianos) between hard enough to make sure the pianist can't do any permanent damage to the unison, and not so hard as to get a "false positive." Once again the word "judgment" rears its ugly head. As far as seating strings goes, all this talk about tapping makes me wonder: supposing the string does ride up the pin, how much pressure can it take to get it to go back down? I would think that light pressure with a unison-wide stick would do the job. After all, with downbearing and all, the string _wants_ to go back down. Bob Davis
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