Kristinn, <<your questions have all been answered very well.>> Yes, thanks to all who have chimed in. <<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).>> Yes, I usually take about an hour to do Kimball verticals. At least it can be said they always sound better when I am finished. Sometimes you just can't justify spending much time on furniture-type stuff. <<The funny thing is that it wasnīt 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 Iīve had the misfortune of turning my nose up into, so I had to find a really short tip to fit the hammer. I couldnīt use a Papps mute of course, and the pitch raise took well over thirty minutes because my hand didnīt fit to well down there. Come to think of it, I should have raised it with the strings free.>> Have you ever used strip mutes to tune all the middle strings first? I do that for all verticals. Strip muting is the way to go for verts, IMO, but especially for pitch raises. Yes, it is possible to do a slightly better job by tuning the unisons first before tuning octaves, but it generally takes much more time, and it is a rare customer who can ever tell the difference anyway. John Formsma Blue Mountain, MS
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