more on floating pitch

[John Formsma]

Mike Spalding wrote:
>* The majority of the piano gets a significant pitch *>* correction in order to match any chosen float pitch.  Therefore, there's *>* no benefit to floating.  Might as well target 440 every time, it won't *>* be any less work, or any less stable, than floating at some other *>* pitch.  *
I entirely agree, nor will it wear out the block.


>*And no matter what pitch the piano gets tuned to, when the *>* weather shifts the piano will go out of tune with itself, whether its *>* drifting towards A440 or away from A440.  So why not target A=440 every *>* time?*>* *>* Mike*
I agree again. Target, that is. It won't be a concert quality
tuning, but it will be considerably closer to the pitch I'm
being *paid to tune it at* than an 8c float, and quite
musically acceptable with no more work involved.

Ron N


I think I can understand why people would want to target A440 every time.
 It's the standard.

Not to beat a dead tuning fork, but it seems for home users who might not
absolutely need A440 each time, we would prefer stability to pitch. I'm
finding that if I have an A438 piano in the winter months, and target A440,
it will be more wildly out of tune in the summer months than if I tune it to
A439.  It's like that the bigger pitch raise during the tuning makes the
problem sections much worse in the higher humidity times.

One thing that wasn't mentioned is the compensation for temperature when a
piano is tuned.  With the one concert piano I tune regularly, the pitch will
vary tremendously with temperature.  So I have to try to figure out where
the piano will be at performance time.  Example:  It's 80 degrees when I
arrive, and the hall is usually 70-72ºF.  So the piano is 4-5 cents flat
now.  If I raise pitch to A440 at that temp, it will be A441 at performance
time when the temp drops to 70ºF.  And I'm stuck with a pitch lowering
(assuming I'm going to follow the strict "target A440 every time.")  So I
compromise pitch, tune it at A439, and it ends up being at A440 when the
temp is corrected.

Conversely, I've come to a church piano in the winter months when the temp
was 60ºF in the sanctuary.  The pitch was A442 in the middle section.  I
know when it heats up, it will be probably slightly flat of A440.  Do I
lower pitch?  Certainly not.  In fact, I raised pitch slightly, hoping that
if the heat had been on, it would have followed the general trend of being
slightly flat everywhere except maybe the high treble and low bass.

So I guess if we can intentionally not target A440 to compensate for temp
change, why should we have any qualms about intentionally not targeting A440
when we know the humidity will markedly change within a few weeks?  Note:
I'm not saying do this on every piano.  Certainly, if a church has an organ
or keyboard at A440, the piano must be there too.  But that's another
situation ... more in the thread of Dampp Chaser systems being a necessity.

What I am saying is that I want customers whose pianos are the most stable.
I don't want my customers calling up four weeks after summer humidity hits
saying their piano now sounds awful.  (Now to me as a tuner, I know if the
humidity has changed the piano, it would sound awful no matter where the
pitch was when I tuned it.  But thankfully, most customers' ears are not as
sensitive as ours, right?  And if the changes are less as a result of our
careful forethought, it seems a win-win situation.)

This might be something we could discuss with our customers before we tune.
 "Ma'am, will there be any other instruments playing along with your piano?
 It will be more stable if I don't raise the pitch now, and let it gradually
come up in a couple months when the humidity is up." You'd want to state it
better to a customer, but that would be the gist of it.

-- 
JF
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