Hey John, your questions have all been answered very well. I´d just like to add one thing about concert tuning. The time spent on each tuning is, of course relatively proportional to the quality of the instrument. You should be able to tune a Kimball spinet in under one hour easily, and be satisfied with the job. Pianos with both wound strings, and double and triple steel unisons in the temperament area obviously present a futile case and any time over one hour is time spent for nought (cool word). If you tune a Steinway, Bösendorfer or a Fazioli the instruments have so much more to offer you as in choice of style, stretch etc. and are able to receive a much better tuning therefore demanding more of your time and effort. As much as one would like to think that each tuning should demand the same amount of work, that´s just the way it is. Since I started talking about higher end products; I tuned a wretched little "thing" yesterday. Swedish spinet of the brand Östlind & Malmquist serial number 24255 Does anybody have the production year? The funny thing is that it wasn´t in that bad of a shape really. But oh, the pain to tune. The tuning pins were extra far down compared to the other few (luckily) spinets I´ve had the misfortune of turning my nose up into, so I had to find a really short tip to fit the hammer. I couldn´t use a Papps mute of course, and the pitch raise took well over thirty minutes because my hand didn´t fit to well down there. Come to think of it, I should have raised it with the strings free. Also, it had stickers coming down from the front end of the keys that PUSHED down on sort of secondary wippens that in turn pushed the main ones up. I had removed the lower lid and was quite startled when the stickers pecked me in the knees on occasion. Today I will tune a Bösendorfer! Kristinn Leifsson, Reykjavík, Iceland At 23:08 16.5.2000 -0500, you wrote: >List, > >There has been mention on the list from those who routinely do a normal >tuning in 45 minutes or less. For those of you who can do this aurally... > >Would all your tunings pass the tuning exam for the RPT test, or are some >below par? If no, how do you justify leaving a piano below "minimal" >standards? > >Do you tune that fast for concerts, or just for "lower-end" tunings? > >How long do you spend on temperament, octaves, unisons? > >How even is the piano? I.e., are all the intervals ascending/descending >evenly? > >What kind of stability is achieved? > >How are your unisons? Three strings perfectly tuned, really close, or what? > >Do you concentrate mostly on good unisons and octaves? > >Any other thing I have left out? > >Thanks in advance, > >John Formsma >Blue Mountain, MS > > > > > > >
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