birdcage tuning

[Anne Acker]

The real question is, why would you ever tune a piano never designed for A440 to be A440?   It's like asking you to carry an elephant about.  You just aren't designed for it, and your frame will suffer for it.

This is a common source of damage to 19th century pianos, btw.   "Well-meaning" repeated pitch raises to A440, even employing overpulls to achieve it., gradually destory the frame and pinblock, and then the techs will say the piano design or construction was defective.  Well, not necessarily.  It was just asked to to more than it was designed to do.

The worst case I know is a piano signed by Paderewski on the pinblock.  A "well meaning tuner" at an important university kept pulling up this French piano (which were often A430) and managed to turn the pinblock into the grand canyon.  Repairing it would have destoryed the signature.  Cute.  the instrument became worth only the value of the signature and the owner (who was storing it there at his alma mater) sued.

It behooves you to do your homework on older pianos before choosing a pitch level.  

Anne
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Hi David,

If it was raised to A440 once--what was the justification for not doing so
this time?

At 02:31 AM 7/6/2007 +0100, you wrote:
>Another fine example of English cheapo piano pinblock "design".
>
>I first tuned this something over a year ago. It had been bought for the 
>couple's child by Grandad, and was 400 cents low, yes a major third.  At 
>that pitch, it really was unplayable, sounding glassy and dreadful. I 
>siuggested to the couple that if we were going to raise the pitch, it might 
>as well be to A440, as at least two tunings would be involved anyway.  I 
>raised it to A440 and it seemed