My 10-minute tuning in practice!

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/12/99 8:04:27 AM Central Standard Time,
kwburton@cadvision.com writes:

<< Al Jeschke, masterful technician from Calgary, gave me this
 "Million Dollar Pitch Raising Tip."
             When you come to a piano that it slightly down in pitch, up to
 15 cents flat, go over the flat areas, pulling up one string of each unison.
 Place two hands on the tuning hammer and do not strike the keys. Pull the #1
 string of each unison just until you feel the pin move. This should just
 take you a minute or two.
             Then, proceed to tune normally. You will find that each trichord
 you come to will have two flat strings and one sharp string. Bring up a flat
 one, then bring down the sharp one and finally bring up the other flat one.
             You will find that the initial work of sharpening loads the
 soundboard in anticipation of the extra tension and the pitch will stay
 where you put it.
             If you have already starting tuning the piano, unaware that the
 treble is flat, simply stop tuning, do the quick raise as described above,
 then continue tuning. You'll be amazed!
 
                         Ken Burton "Doctor Piano" Calgary Alberta >>

Although I hesitate to mention it, there is another variation of the quick
raise I learned long ago known as "blind tuning".  After raising the middle
string of each unison with a muting strip in, do as Ken says above with both
hands on your hammer moving as quickly from one pin to another as you can,
tuning the outside pins, move each pin the approximate amount you "remember"
moving all of the middle pins.

In my opinion, this is very risky unless you are in the very early parts of a
very major pitch raise.  You can very easily far overpull or underpull your
unisons, thus defeating the shortcut altogether.  Remember that the theory
behind all of this is that in order to get a fine and stable tuning, your
piano has to be very close to being in tune already.  If your pitch  raise
technique results in a piano which is still substantially off, you haven't
gained anything.

I sometimes use the "blind" (maybe it should be called the "deaf" since you
can see what you are doing but not hear it) technique in a treble section when
I find that even after a pitch raise and calculated overpull, there are too
many notes which are still too flat and I'm running out of time.  I'll quickly
bump up the outside pins and run over the middles again then pull in the
unisons.  If I have been accurate enough in my shortcut, it will take a few
minutes off my job time and leave a stable treble.

Caution, don't try this until you have some real good experience at fast pitch
raises and feel that you are very sure about your hammer technique.  You could
end up making the piano far worse or breaking strings.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin