[pianotech] once a year school tunings (was: offsetting from A440)

[William Monroe]

Wim,

Keep in mind that what you say holds true if you float the pitch as well.
If tuned to 441 say, as it drops in pitch through the season, it too will be
at pitch at some point, and closer to pitch at the time of the next tuning.
I'm with Dave for some cases, preferring to maintain a window of say 339 -
442.  If I lower the pitch to 440 in the summer on an uncontrolled piano, it
is likely to be at or below 438, 437..... by the time of the next tuning.
Different strokes, but that is one option I will use.

Your second point I agree with.  If it's really just 15 or so notes in the
middle that are particularly out, I find it works for me to correct those
notes quickly and then tune.  Another approach is to see where the bass lies
and use that as a guide to establishing pitch.

William R. Monroe




On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 4:26 AM, <wimblees at aol.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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