Treble Falseness

[Don Mannino]

Andre,

Thanks for your note. Having just finished a day of prepping 5 Kawai grands
for a dealer / music teacher presentation, I'd like to make some
suggestions if I may:

The Kawai aliquot (rear duplex to some) and duplex scales are extremely
active. These add ring to the tone that is beneficial when music is being
created, but does make the treble more difficult to tune cleanly. The
solution is simple: mute these sections during tuning. The next time you
tune one of these pianos (or any fine piano, really) try using some good
quality (i.e., not gummy) masking tape on these sections. Because I don't
personally care to keep sticking masking tape on the strings, I had some
long thin bags made of soft fabric and filled them with dry beans. These
aren't too heavy to carry, and do a great job of temporarily muting the
duplex during tuning.

When tuning the unisons of the top octave, I also mute the un-damped notes
up to C-7, so that the note in this section which is an octave below the
top 7 or 8 notes does not ring sympathetically while I am tuning the
unisons and cause slight beating (from those slightly sharpened octaves).

If the strings still beat on their own with the duplex muted, then a light
seating at the bridge is normally all it takes to clean them up.

Of the 5 pianos I tuned today, there was only one string in the treble of
one piano that was a little false, even after seating on the bridge. Seems
like a reasonable percentage to me. Of course these were new instruments,
so your results may vary.

The Kawai grands destined for Europe are normally voiced much brighter than
for North America. This may explain some of the difference between your
experiences and ours. (I wouldn't think that the Kawai pianos are brighter
than the Yamahas, though) Hard hammers and bright tone do tend to excite
the duplex and aliquot scales more stongly, so I would still suggest that
you try muting those string sections during tuning.

Don Mannino RPT, Manager
Kawai Piano Technical Support, US and Canada