for those on the fence about hearing protection..

[Mark Purney]

Thanks for your comments.

The piano I mentioned had a Dampp-Chaser with undercover, and was tuned 
regularly. The entire piano was within a few cents, and only needed a 
fine tuning. I had no reason to suspect any significant drifting 
occurred, but anything is possible, especially if people forget to 
refill the DC.


Ron Nossaman wrote:
>
>> 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
>
>
>


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