May Their Practice rooms be filled with 1098's

[Ron Nossaman]

>    OK, in my experience, as you're trying to bring a string up to pitch, it
>doesn't seem to want to go, in spite of the obvious movement of the pin in
>the block. Then,,,,,zoom! the string finally renders,,,,,,,right past where
>you wished it would go. I have often wondered if the pressure bar isn't too
>low or something.  Anybody care to give their imput? Believe me, I'd like
>nothing more than to be able to easily tune these things, but after tuning
>three or four in practice rooms, I'm done for the day. As opposed to being
>able to tune twice as many Yamaha's or Kawai's.

I haven't had any to deal with on a regular basis until recently, so I'm
anything but an authoritative opinion, but it seems to me it's the other
way. The strings seem to me to render too easily, at least on the new ones.
Hammer position and technique do make a tremendous difference for me. I
found that pulling from anything past about 1:00 o'clock on those terribly
tight pins sprung the pin down enough that, even though I was taking up
string, the pitch stayed nearly the same or even dropped some. Then, when I
let up on the hammer, the pin sprung back up and pulled the string sharp.
Pushing BACK on the hammer somewhat as I turned the pin helped too, with
the hammer at 12:00. The toughest part for me is finding the equilibrium
point where the string tension balances the back torque and flagpole pull
of the pin so the note will stay where I put it. Just pulling the tip off
of the pin is too often enough to disturb the tuning. I have the best luck
at the 11-12 o'clock position, intentionally flagpoling the pin back and
forth after turning it to position, to determine where the equilibrium
point is, then rotating the pin to center it. I do something very similar
with any other tuning, as I expect you all do, but I have to pay more
attention and spend more time with these. They do sound pretty good when
you finally get them tuned, but it does seem like unnecessary abuse to get
that done.

My take, 

Ron N