There was a recent thread about pitch raises, discussing how many cents flat a piano needed to be before a pitch raise was required, and the like. I wanted to comment on this thread but thought it would be better to wait a few weeks because I didn't want to comment on a specific post in the thread, but rather, just make a general comment in response. I was surprised at the emphasis put on the Number of Passes That Needed To Be Done, with someone claiming they did a 100 cents pitch raise and tuning in one pass. (No one can tell me that was a good tuning.) Others had decided exactly how may cents flat a piano needed to be before it got that extra pass called a "pitch raise". Five cents? Extra pass for pitch raise. Four cents? One pass does it. When I sit down at a piano, I tune it until I, personally, am happy with the way it sounds. It may take one pass. It may take two passes. It may take three full passes. It just depends on the piano. Am I happy having to go back over everything that third time? Well, no. But I'm not happy with myself if I leave it with a couple of unisons that are already wandering, or octaves that have drifted to questionable widths. The client may not know the difference, but I do. And even if they don't know, the tuning will last longer if it's more perfectly executed in the first place. If you have unisons with a slow roll, it takes less time for them to go "HonkyTonk" on you than a unison that is perfect. It only makes sense. So even if the client cannot appreciate the difference, in the interest of providing a tuning that is as stable as I can possibly make it, I feel it is my obligation to get the tuning as close as I can before leaving, no matter how far off it was in the first place. Even if I have to stay there a little longer. Now, I'm not saying that I achieve perfection, far from it. All I'm saying is that I never think about how many passes I have to do. Never. I sit down and tune the thing until I feel OK about walking out the door. Tom SivakChicago -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090820/a6a441ff/attachment.htm>
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