This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment I would like to ask your opinion about piano tuning stability. Last = weekend we finished our international piano competition in Boston. It = began on Wednesday June 22nd. I was the director of the competition and = had a lot of administrative work to do. A couple of weekends before the competition I made several visits to the = college and tuned four of the practice pianos, because last time in 2003 = they were badly out of tune. They hadn't been tuned since January, the = beginning of the semester, and I thought I would save our organization = some money.=20 The pianos were very old (looked as if they were from the early 1900s), = and consisted of two Steinway Bs, a Steinway A, and a Baldwin Hamilton = Studio console. They didn't seem to have been looked after very well. = There were paper clips, pins, dust and other debris inside. Some of the = tuning pins were rather loose. The music stand on a Steinway B was = broken and in terrible shape.=20 I used the SAT III to to tune them. I applied strong blows to equalize = the tension in the strings, and lighter listening blows to check the = resultant tuning. When I finished each piano, there was a very big = improvement, and I could have given a recital on each of them. The notes = had a bell like clarity, although the tone of the Baldwin upright was = rather mediocre.=20 During the competition, the practice pianos were in use from 8 am until = 11 pm each day by contestants. They practiced such things as the = Prokofiev Toccata, Rachmaninoff Etudes, Liszt etc, and they began to go = out of tune. The air conditioning in the building cycled on and off = during the night and day. They were in quite out of tune by the end of = the competition.=20 My question is, would you typically expect pianos to go out of tune = under these circumstances or should they have held their tuning better? = I know it is difficult to say without seeing the pianos, but I just = wondered what your opinion might be. I'm not sure what else I could = have done to make the pianos hold their tuning longer. I couldn't go in = to re-tune them because they were constantly in use by the contestants = from morning to late at night. I was also overloaded with work, running = the competition, so I wouldn't have had the time anyway.=20 Thanks for your thoughts and a happy July 4th.=20 Robert Finley ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/40/23/59/33/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC