Tuning forks

[JIMRPT@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/28/1999 11:45:56 PM, Brian H. wrote:

<<"I suspect that the day that I turn over control to a tuning

machine, is the day that I stop learning and improving MY tuning skills.">>

Hmmm  Brian this sounds like me................. several years back :-)
I am now and always have been an aural tuner and I once thought of ETDs as 
crutches for inadequate skills and techs.  Tain't needfully so!  I was 
convinced by several well respected types :-) to try the thingee, but mostly 
by the Mad Scientist Dr. AL. He didn't suggest that I buy a SAT but he said 
to me "you don't really know do you?" while I was telling him my opinion of 
all the pitfalls and shortcomings of these evil devices.

 I was an adequate tuner before purchasing an SAT and I still am an adequate 
tuner after SAT purchase but I feel that I am a much better adequate tuner 
than before.  I still tune aurally outside the shop and for fine tunings 
inside the shop, for everything else, i.e. pitch raises, chipping new 
strings, settling in new strings with multiple tunings, etc. I use my SAT.

 I also check my tunings/temperament occasionally with the SAT in the shop 
and have lost many arguments with it but I have also won some of them too 
:-).  I still tune the same way as before the SAT but I 'listen' differently 
and learn something in the process almost everytime I do so, all the while 
arguing with those blinking red eyes that don't particularly care what I 
think!! :-)

  If you have an SAT and allow your skills to deteriorate they will, however 
if you use the SAT to sharpen and improve your skills it will help you do 
that too, and do so in an incomparable manner. 
Of course this is just the opinion of one recovering aural tuner.
Jim Bryant (FL)