Bay Area Pitches (was Re: Steinway 457cps pitch)

[PAULNPbl@cs.com]

Ed wrote:..''Then I spent an hour tuning a Moore and Co. Victorian style 
ET,(which is 
really a mild WT).   Sister Rosemary loved it, said that is somehow sounded 
like the piano she remembered from her youth, and she is not old enough to 
have been around in 1880. ''

When I tuned well temperaments in the Bay Area in the '80's(thats the 1980's) 
occasionally I would 
tune for an older person who would comment that he/she had not heard piano
tuning like mine since he/she was growing up.    Where, I asked, and When? 
Often childhood and youth for that person had been around the time of WW I, 
and
the location was England.

Enough of these encounters, and I started to believe it: the time frame was 
about 
right, and the 'Olde' tunings are reported to have been in common practice 
later in England than elsewhere. 

                Paul Bailey



In a message dated 3/28/02 5:44:56 PM, owner-pianotech-digest@ptg.org writes:

<< 
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:26:47 EST
From: A440A@AOL.COM
Subject: Re: Bay Area Pitches (was Re: Steinway 457cps pitch)

> Understandably there will be factors
> involved that are hard to predict, but is there a way to get really close?

Greetings, 
    Yes,  there are ways.  They are called SAT,RCT, VT etc.  (Pitch raisins 
don't mean throwing dried grapes around).    
      This morning I was called to the "Mother house", a Catholic home for 
elderly nuns here in Nashville.  The Steinway B had been left flat some years 
before and I was looking at a pitch raise of 10 cents in the bass, 15 cents 
in the middle, and almost 40 cents in the 7th octave.  
    I used the SAT to give me a compensated measure at each octave as I went 
up from A1.  After 15 minutes, I reached C88 with the entire piano at 440, 
give or take 2-3 cents.  That is really close for this amount of raising.  
Then, I spent an hour tuning a Moore and Co. Victorian style ET,(which is 
really a mild WT).   Sister Rosemary loved it, said that is somehow sounded 
like the piano she remembered from her youth, and she is not old enough to 
have been around in 1880. 
  How close is close enough?   
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT 
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