I've been chewing on a few ideas about tuning the high treble tuning lately.
I'm not going to post all of them at once, suspecting how the discussion is
likely to splinter into other tangents. So I want to introduce one idea at a
time for the list's feedback.
First idea -- seems like when I NAIL a unison in the high treble the note can
become lower in volume and sustain and less interesting in content. I was in
a class given by Don Manino once ("The Sound of Your Tuning") where he
suggested and demonstrated SLIGHTLY detuning one of the strings of the unison
up there to attempt to increase the sustain. There were two same-model pianos
in the room and he did a direct A-B comparison. I was sold. Sustain was
noticeably increased with the detuned unison. And it had a little "shimmer"
to it - not really an objectionable beat, just a "shimmer", maybe a slow
vibrato or slow-rolling beat, though the length of the sustain wasn't long
enough to make the slow-rolling "shimmer"/vibrato/beat at all unmusical.
Perfect unisons of course assume strings that are not self-beating. As we
know, some pianos are not able to acheive that in some or many high treble
strings, and thus create their own imperfections, often ANNOYING
imperfections. In these cases, the PURE unisons also make their impure
neighbors stand out in comparison, so DEtuning the pure ones may make for a
little more consistency in the piano's sound.
Another little interesting phrase that was related to me second-hand was from
an older, presumably very experienced tech who was fond of saying, "Don't tune
the life out of the unison!" I would assume the phenomena I've described
above would be what he's referring to here, too.
Your thoughts?
BTW, I don't remember really whether Don recommended detuning the one string
to the flat or to the sharp side. I SEEM to remember flat, but I'm unsure.
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