Thoughts on Pin Setting

[Ken Burton]

            Robert,

            Thank you for your good thoughts on hammer technique. A few
years ago, I became concerned to learn as much as I could about this subject
and it resulted in my book, DIFFERENT STROKES.
            I classify pianos according to the discoveries you made about
friction at the v-bar or aggraffe or cape d-astro. I made the classification
according to whether the pitch of the string moves at the same time that you
can feel the pin move (Class A) or whether the pitch moves first (Class B)
or whether it moves after you feel the pin move (Class C.)
            There are some tricks and principles which I have described to
minimize these differences and work with them to achieve stable tuning.
            However, the very fact that you have recognized these
differences and are developing ways to cope with them to achieve stable
tuning, means that you are on the right track.

            Ken Burton
                        Ken Burton "Doctor Piano" Calgary Alberta
                                   kwburton@cadvision.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Scott <rscott@wwnet.net>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Friday, December 18, 1998 11:30 AM
Subject: Thoughts on Pin Setting


>
>I seem to have unconsciously developed a pin setting technique,
>and I would like to hear what you every-day tuners have to say
>about it.
>
>First of all, I see major differences between pianos in
>how the string gets from the tuning pins to the speaking length.
>Some vertical pianos have an almost straight shot from the pin
>with nothing to cause friction, while the treble section of
>many grands has lots of felt causing lots of friction on
>the strings.  In the later case you can move the tuning pin
>a lot before anything happens to the pitch, while in the
>former case you can sometimes get a pitch change just by
>breathing on the tuning hammer.
>
>These differences call for different pin setting techniques.  In
>general I find the no-friction situation a little easier to
>deal with because the strings don't move very far when they
>settle and its easier to get small changes in pitch.  Of course
>I try to make most of my adjustments with pure rotational forces
>on the tuning pin and only resort to a bending force when I am
>very close and when just a gentle springing is effective.  If
>gentle springing won't get the pitch where I want it, I go right
>back to pure rotation again.  Most of the time I like to rotate
>the pin to just above the desired pitch and then spring it down.
>
>I have heard one technique described where you test the pin setting
>by seeing if you can spring the pitch both up and down an equal
>amount from where it is.  On strings with lots of friction I find
>that I cannot always spring the pitch both up and down without
>resorting to more-than-gentle springing, so I don't generally
>do this test.  I suspect that over the long run this technique
>may do unacceptable damage to the pin block.
>
>Of course there is also the test blow - a time-honored technique
>that is hard on both the ears and the action.  It jars not
>only the string you are tuning but also the other two in the
>unison.  I don't use test blows either.
>
>What I use is gentle rocking of the tuning hammer in the springing
>direction with the pin fitting only loosely in the socket.  This
>creates a small controllable jolt in the string that I hope is
>equivalent to what a test blow does.  But while a test blow
>can only jolt down in pitch, the hammer rocking can jolt both
>up and down.  Now I realize that it is possible for a test
>blow to leave the pitch higher than before, but that is not as
>common an outcome.  If I should spring the pin down too far in pitch
>so that it is on the verge of jumping back up, the hammer rocking
>test I believe is a more reliable way to test for that condition
>than a test blow.  So when I think I have finished tuning a string,
>just as I am taking the hammer off the string, I give it a little
>rock both up and down.  If the pitch didn't change through that
>disturbance, I trust it will not jump a few hours later.  I try to
>make it a practice to alway listen to the string one last time after
>the hammer is removed in case the act of removing the hammer jolts
>the string enough to change pitch.
>
>Whenever I go back and tune a piano that I had tuned previously,
>I take notice of the pattern of tuning errors.  If all the pins
>had been set perfectly, then I would expect the tuning errors
>to be essentially random.  Of course, if the players are always
>playing the key of C, then certain strings will detune more than
>others just from getting more use.  But the pattern that I find
>the more interesting is the pattern in the three strings of a unison.
>On some pianos the string with the shortest non-speaking length
>is uniformly higher in pitch than its more distant companions.  I
>suspect that this is due to my pin setting technique not properly
>compensating for the length of the non-speaking segment.  But by
>the time I get around to seeing this pattern of tuning errors, I
>have forgotten what specific pin setting technique I was using
>for that piano, and so I don't learn from my mistakes as fast
>as I should.  But I have noticed lately that this bias affecting
>the near pins is almost gone.  I think I am becoming aware that
>near pins should not be sprung as much as far pins because a little
>springing goes a long way on a near pin.  Since I tend to prefer
>springing from above in pitch, the effect of over-springing
>on near pins would be to leave them wanting to go up in pitch.
>
>I seems that a combination of small amounts of springing and
>using hammer rocking instead of test blows has resulted in
>the reasonably good pin setting.
>
>-Robert Scott
> Detroit-Windsor Chapter PTG
>
>