Stored Tunings v/s FAC

[Farrell]

Hi Kevin. The Double Octave Beat (DOB) feature does essentially the same
thing as going back and changing one of your FAC numbers. It is simply quite
a bit more user-friendly. Other major improvements with the SAT III are the
historical tunings (as you point out), super-long lasting battery, and
smaller size, among others.

With your SAT II, you ??cannot?? change the FAC values for the canned
tunings. I don't know that you can with the SAT III either. But with the SAT
III you can use your DOB feature to adjust octave widths so that you can get
exactly what you want even with a canned tuning. So with the SAT III you can
adjust your octave widths in either FAC mode or using a canned tuning. (I
think you are right that with the SAT II you can only change octave widths
if you are in FAC mode.) My point was that if you are using your ears to
make the SAT reflect the tuning you want, you can start anywhere and use the
adjustments available to you to make it spit out exactly what you like.

I hope Jim Coleman will correct me if I am wrong, but I think I recall that
Mr. Coleman sometimes uses his SAT III by simply measuring/guessing a
starting "F" value and simply lets the SAT calculate a tuning in the old "F"
program mode. Maybe the calculated tuning will be close, maybe it won't.
Then he uses the DOB feature to customize the calculated tuning to fit the
piano and satisfy his ears. This was my point regarding it does not matter
so much where you start with the SAT III because you can customize the
results to your liking.

I rarely use a canned tuning - except for MAJOR pitch raises. Although
sometimes I wonder why. I have observed that perhaps between 2% and 5% of my
FAC calculated tunings are WAY off - so often they are right on the money -
but sometimes I need to use a DOB adjustment even in the temperament region.
But I imagine the main cause is that the string I used for my "A"
measurement was simply not representative of the whole piano - maybe it was
at the end of a string size section - or maybe it is a poorly scaled piano -
or maybe the magic just didn't work that time.

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin E. Ramsey" <ramsey@extremezone.com>
To: "tech list piano" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2001 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: Stored Tunings v/s FAC

>     Terry, I don't usually use the stored tunings except for a couple
which
> work well on spinets. Adjusting as you go is one thing that I've been
doing
> for years, and to my way of thinking gives me a result which is far more
> even and uniform than anyone can do with just their ears, (Flame suit
> on,,,,,,). But what if the width of the temperament octave is all wrong
for
> the piano you're trying to tune with that canned tuning? Then you're going
> to find yourself fighting the machine trying to make everything fit. If
I'm
> using a FAC, I can just go back and enter a lower or higher value for A,
and
> change the width of my temperament till it gives me what I want. Of
course,
> I'm using a SAT 11, so I don't have a DOB thingee, and have to do it all
on
> the fly, which is no problem. If I were to buy a SAT 3, the main reason
> would be for the historical tuning feature.
>
> Kevin E. Ramsey
> ramsey@extremezone.com
>