David >From what you're saying it doesn't seem to make any difference. If you tune the piano to A440 in August, it will be out of tune in November. If you tune it to A445 in August, it will also be?out of tune in November. (I had the same problem when?I tuned in St. Louis and in Colorado, by the way). All I'm saying is that if you tune it to A440, at least some of the time the piano will be where it's supposed to be. We can't control what happens the rest of the year.? The other thing about this is?that the humidity pushes the middle of the soundboard out. I've found?pianos with the first octave above the break at least 35 cents high, but the bass was basically right on, and the same?for the upper treble.?If your tune the whole piano 20 cents high, you're retuning the bass and the high treble. But if you bring the middle down, you won't need to do much to the ends. It would seem to me that the whole piano would be more stable that way. But that's just my opinion. Wim -----Original Message----- From: David Nereson <da88ve at gmail.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Mon, Aug 3, 2009 10:44 pm Subject: [pianotech] once a year school tunings (was: offsetting from A440) Wim--? ? These are school pianos. They don't want to tune the pianos more than once a year if they don't have to. I have to leave them sharp at the end of August. If I lower them to A440, they need a pitch raise in Oct. or Nov., and then the tuning isn't as stable.? ? Yes, they're paying me to tune the pianos to standard pitch, but if they're going to tune them only once during the school year, they're going to have to put up with a) pianos that are sharp in the mid-range from August until the heating system comes on or b) pianos that are flat in the middle from about November thru the rest of the school year.? ? Every year I explain (to the same teachers) about humidity changes and why you can't expect a piano tuning to last the whole school year unless the humidity is maintained at the same level, and every year it goes in one ear and out the other. They just refuse to believe it's humidity changes. It must be the tuner's fault. One teacher even refused to pay for a tuning in November because he believed I hadn't "done it right" back in August.? ? --David Nereson, RPT ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090804/d641b13a/attachment.htm>
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