I have an old Ricca & Sons piano (37123 = 1913) that I plan to restore sometime. Before I restore it, I was thinking about knocking it out of tune to record some songs (almost all the notes still play). Before that, btw, (the piano is very close to in tune right now) I am planning to record some songs by a specific songwriter (Fanny Crosby in case you're curious). About putting the piano out of tune, I'm thinking about putting it either 100 cents or 200 cents flat (haven't decided where yet, and the strings will be coming off anyway). In the monochords (A1 to F#10) I'm thinking -25 cents (from wherever I decide to "tune" the piano), then at least one string of the bichords and 2 strings (probably middle and right) of the trichords would be tuned to "pitch" (A# or B = 440). Now, I'm thinking of putting the unisons at -40 cents from G11 to C16 (bichords), -33 cents from C#17 to A#26 (bichord), B27 (bichord) has a broken string, -25 cents from C28 to D42 (trichords), -20 cents from D#43 to G47, -15 cents from G#48 to D54, -20 cents from D#55 to B75, -25 cents from C76 to B87, and -20 / +20 or -25 / +25 cents for C88. If you have suggestions for a safe way or alternate way to do this (I want a honky-tonk flat piano sound) -- I would appreciate knowing about it. Also, when I DO get around to restoring the piano (I probably won't knock it out of tune until I'm fairly sure of an idea when I'm going to start restoring the piano), what are the basic things that affect the tone? I got some tapes of some piano music with a tone in the midrange (C28 to probably G59 or C64 or something like that) that I really like, and I'd like to make the tone on my Ricca similar to that, with a rich bass abundant in high harmonics like a good 6 or 7-foot grand (whichever is the closest to the same string length). _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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