tuning two pianos together

[Cy Shuster]

This is absolutely a case where ETDs shine.

I tuned two D's and a C3 together for a concert.  One D was new, out of C & 
A; the other was ten years out of a rebuild; and the C3 was used for daily 
teaching.

Using TuneLab, I measured iH on all three pianos, and then went home, sat 
back with my iPaq and tried various octave styles.  On the first pass, I 
just wanted to get the overall stretch about the same, so I just looked at 
the offsets for A0 and C8.  After I got those close (within, say, five 
cents), I compared A2, A3, A5, and A6, and kept fiddling until they got 
reasonably close.  The best match turned out to be 6:2 12ths in the bass and 
3:1 12ths in the treble, for all three pianos!

Once I had my target tuning curves, I just went back and tuned each piano.

--Cy--


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Formsma" <formsma at gmail.com>
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 9:59 AM
Subject: Re: tuning two pianos together


> I'm not a machine tuner anymore, and was tuning these pianos aurally.
> I was wondering how machine tuners would have handled this kind of
> situation. It seemed a situation in which a machine (perhaps) would
> have been liability rather than an asset...