for those on the fence about hearing protection..

[Ron Nossaman]

> If a string is binding on a v-bar. I don't want the pianist to 
> be the one to balance out the tension, because I would not expect any 
> repeat business from that customer.

The point I've tried to make for many years, still 
unsuccessfully, is that the problem isn't necessarily at the V 
bar, as is almost universally assumed. When we get instant 
aural (or visual) verification of change with any pin 
movement, then test blows are redundant if we have any idea 
what we're doing with the tuning hammer - if it's coming from 
the V bar. Tune a string in the capo section, using light 
blows. Get it where you want it, and where it stays there 
through a few more light blows. Then whack it. Depending on 
the severity and direction of humidity swings the piano had 
been through since you last tuned it, and how far you moved 
the string to tune it this time, it will either not change 
perceptibly, or drop anywhere from just detectable, to 4+ 
beats. Unless we're hopelessly incompetent with a tuning 
hammer, that pitch drop didn't come from the V bar. It came 
through the bridge. Now, tune the string again, using the same 
soft blows as the first time. Get it where you want it, and 
whack it again. What happens? It stays put, if you know how to 
run the hammer. If we couldn't stabilize the string with soft 
blows the first time, why could we the second? Try it on the 
next string (next note). You'll likely get a similar effect. 
Did you forget how to run the hammer since the second pass on 
that last string. No, of course not. You just didn't hit it 
hard enough, at least once, to find out if it would render 
through the bridge before you quit tuning it. On the third 
string (next note), don't touch the pin at all. Note where the 
pitch is, and whack it. If the other two strings dropped in 
pitch, this one likely will too, and you hadn't laid hammer to 
it yet, so you can't blame hammer technique.

Continual pounding will cause a string to creep sharp when we 
quit and come back to check in a minute or so. This, I think, 
comes from the V bar because we weren't getting an accurate 
representation of what we had when we left it. So it's 
possible to pound too hard as well as not hard enough.

It's a combination of things. The people who say you can tune 
softly with stability with just good hammer technique are 
either tuning pianos who's MC hasn't changed at all since they 
last tuned it, and they're making one cent revisions, or they 
aren't aware of how lousy their tunings sound the week after 
they did them. Aside from the unusually inept "tooner", 
virtually all of the tuners I've followed from one to three 
weeks after their efforts has been a "don't have to hit 'em to 
get 'em stable" practitioner. If you're tuning in real world 
climate conditions, you *do* have to    hit 'em enough, at 
least once, to find out what slack the back scale has to give 
you. Then you adjust your approach to what the piano tells you 
is necessary.


> I recently tuned a church grand in which, before tuning, I could mute 
> off a string in the octave 7 region, and knock it 3 to 8 cents flat with 
> just one moderate test blow (not pounding, but about as hard as I might 
> actually strike a key when playing my favorite Liszt Etude). The 
> previous tuner might suggest I play too hard, but I would say he did not 
> use firm enough test blows, and got lucky that nobody played it hard 
> enough to cause a problem.

I have pianos that do the same thing. Since I'm the previous 
tuner, I know it wasn't the last guy not hitting them hard 
enough. The pianos I find this in have typically gone through 
40%+ humidity swings between tunings. These same pianos, tuned 
again in the same season a couple of months later (wedding 
funeral, etc), don't do this. Tuned again at their regularly 
scheduled time, they do. When I follow someone a week of 
stable weather after he tuned it and can do this, it's not 
humidity.
Ron N