Harmonium temperament

[A440A@aol.com]

Tom writes: 
>  I personally find the piano sounding less than sweet on many of the "white
> note" chords, and I think I'm going to round up or down some of these values
> on the next tuning.
> Here are the offsets from that harmonium temperament:
>        A :     0
>        G# :    -3.7
>        G :     0
>        F# :    -1.7
>        F :     -2.2
>        E :     -1.1
>        D# :    -3
>        D :     -3
>        C# :    0.5
>        C :     -5
>        B :         -3.2
>        A# :    -4.1
>
>Alot of negative values;  I offset RCT to measure A as 0.  It was actually
> 17cents sharp, meaning that many of the negative values are closer to 440.
> It occurs to me that it is possible that the harmonium is simply out of
>tune. 

This is fairly close to a well temperament centered on F#, C# or Ab.  There 
is the abberation for the G and the Eb, but that may be tuning,  (I think the 
G could be lowered about 3 and the B raised about 2 cents and *some* order 
would be restored). 
   Harmoniums are usually not centered around C, but rather, the keys like 
F#, C# .  Try the drones and see what they are tuned to,  you might find that 
the drones are are likely to be droning on the nicest sounding keys. 
   As far as tuning these things, (if you want to "westernize it),  I have 
had good luck with a small drop of CA and if needed, a touch of baking soda 
dropped on it to flatten things.  If you need to raise the pitch,( Unusual)  
as Dremel tool can be lightly used with the cutoff wheel to thin the tip out. 
 Don't cut it short, as that will affect the air passage through the reed 
slot.  
Regards, 
ED Foote RPT