Tune it where it is

[Ron Nossaman]

>Good advice , John, but Al Sanderson (inventor of the accutuner) says never 
>raise more than 20 cents sharp or else risk breaking the string. But, I 
>guess you have been doing it without any problems. How far can one go 
>without breaking a string?

>From what I've seen, in the tenor section, strings tend to be around 40% of
their breaking strength unless it's an unusually high tension scale.
Pulling as much as 50 cents above pitch won't get these higher than about
50% until you get around note # 70. If you are an aural tuner, starting in
the middle and working to the ends, the middle will drop as you add
tension, so your actual overstretch isn't as much as it seems to be. The
high bass is often already at about 50% at pitch, so you don't want to over
pull any more than necessary here. Fortunately, the bass doesn't drop as
much as the tenor and low treble as you add tension, so it's not necessary
to over pull it as high in the first place. If your pitch raise procedure
is good enough to leave the treble close to where it belongs when you're
done, you never did over pull it enough to be a problem.

In spite of all the worrying about over pulling strings with pitch raises,
The people who just yank them up and get on with it don't seem to have any
higher a breakage rate than the folks who try to sneak up on it with
multiple passes. If the strings are in reasonable condition, you probably
have a greater safety margin than you realize. That doesn't mean that you
can't damage strings with excessive over pull, but I think there's more
tolerance than we are aware of.

At least according to my scaling spreadsheet.

Ron N