Veritune/ first impressions

[Charles E Faulk]

Just got in my Verituner today. So I decided I'd tune my own Baldwin
SF-10 to try it out. Did about 5 minutes of arm calisthenics to warm up
for the tuning pins, and then dug out my heavy-duty 14" 'crowbar' tuning
hammer and set to work. 

First of all, the display is inspired. It has a three pronged spinner in
the middle for fine tuning and a slower moving outer ring for reading
pitches that are far from the mark. It works like a charm. Being a long
time SAT user this took some time to get used to. The spinner moves
faster than the light display on my SAT III and it's not as easy to stop.
Oh, you can also change the turning speed on the spinner if you want.

I started by tuning A4, then A3, then A2. I then went to F3 and tuned
chromatically up to C#5, then I went back to F3 and tuned down to F2. The
Verituner requires no pre-programming. It was impressive. The thirds and
sixths progressed very smoothly from note to note even over the break
where the wrapped strings begin.

At this point it occurred to me that it might be fun to set up my SAT III
along side the Verituner and compare each note to note. It was
interesting, but I need to try them side by side on a few more pianos to
form any firm conclusions. Basically I noticed that the Verituner tended
to stretch  more in the 2nd and 5th octaves. I didn't have to tinker
around with the bass strings as much with this new machine.

There's a lot of other features on the machine that I'll have to try
including a plethera of HT's that can be easily programmed. 

The only thing I found slightly lacking was the note finding or stepping
program. The Verituner moves quickly from note to note if you move by
half steps, but it tends to hesitate if you're jumping around. I tend to
use a lot of aural checks while tuning, and this slows the machine down.

All in all, I give it high marks.

Charles Faulk, RPT
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