Thanks for advice (real long)

[Benny L. Tucker]

Hello again folks,
    Just wanted to say thank you all for your advice concerning my post on
setting the tuning pins.
    I would estimate that I tune between 3 -5 thousand pianos a year at the
plant. You would think I knew what I was doing. Problem is we don't get time
to do it "right". Only when I'm moonlighting in the evenings do I get to
test my real abilities. While tuning all these factory pianos, I have a lot,
and I mean a lot, of practice trying to perfect technique.
    To all of you who suggested, yes I have the book "Different Strokes" by
Ken Burton (sp). A lot of techniques in his book I was already using. Also
learned a few new techniques!!
    This original post came about mostly because when I first started
moonlighting, I volunteered to keep our Church piano in tune. "mistake #1".
Having never tuned but a couple of small grands before, this thing blew me
away with the power it had. "Yamaha C5". I guess it scared me because of the
"big sound" I was getting out of it. I subconsciously reasoned that due to
the big sound, it must need some serious pin and string setting. Bottom
line, for a year and a half I wound up tuning that piano every couple of
weeks or so due to poor unisons. I tried every technique in Different
Strokes and then some of my own and nothing would make that piano hold.
    Then one day when I was really sick of fighting with it, I just thought,
"to heck with this", it ain't going to hold anyway. So I just tuned it
without much thought of what I was doing. That was March of last year.And it
held, and held, and held. this January was the first time I had touched it
since. And then only because the pitch was getting kinda low. The unisons
still sounded good. Heck, I was scared to touch it again. And stupid me
didn't document how I did tune it the last time. So this January when I did
tune it again, I set the pins downpitch kinda hard again, and it held for
about 2 weeks. (sic).
Just tuned it again last Sunday, with the technique that I described, only
very light pin setting, more like just helping the pins relax after pulling
them up.
So far, so good.:) Wednesday night it still sounded like it was just tuned.
I did write it down this time, exactly what I did.
    This is what my original post was about. All in all, I think I was
leaving too much downpitch twist in the pins when tuning this particular
piano. I'm trying this new approach out for a while and see how it works.
    Thanks again to all who answered my post!


Benny L. Tucker
Yamaha Factory Tuner
Precision Piano Tuning & Repair
Thomaston, Ga.