[pianotech] Another Cruise Ship Piano Tuning Question

wimblees at aol.com wimblees at aol.com
Sun Feb 14 18:44:35 MST 2010



When I come to each piano, it will have been reasonably well tuned two weeks prior. With respect to unisons, I'll typically see (well, hear...) one string out of every six or so half-steps beating and more whining a bit. What I find 95+% of the time is that if the pitch of a string has moved at all, the right string has gone a little bit sharp and the left string has gone maybe twice that amount flat. I'll be like that on virtually every single note that is making some noise. 
 
What on earth would cause such a phenomenon? 
 
Terry Farrell 



When I was at UA, I asked that question, and Jim Ellis explained that just a little change in temperature and/or humidity can effect one string, and not another of the same note. In your situations, I wonder if the lid is propped up during playing, and that just the air moving inside the room, from either people moving around, or the AC vents blowing on the strings, is causing this to happen. 



Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT 
Piano Tuner/Technician
94-505 Kealakaa Str. 
Mililani, Oahu, HI  96789
808-349-2943 
www.Bleespiano.com
Author of: 
The Business of Piano Tuning 
available from Potter Press 
www.pianotuning.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Farrell <mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Sun, Feb 14, 2010 3:21 pm
Subject: [pianotech] Another Cruise Ship Piano Tuning Question


I have about 18 Yamaha C3s I tune on three cruise ships. Most of these pianos are played every day for several hours. I see them every two weeks. Each one gets a pretty thorough tuning every six weeks or so - the other visits they will get some level of touch-up. The environment on these 1,000-foot-long, ten story ships is VERY stable as there are very few doors and windows opening to the outside and the AC runs 24/7. 
 
When I come to each piano, it will have been reasonably well tuned two weeks prior. With respect to unisons, I'll typically see (well, hear...) one string out of every six or so half-steps beating and more whining a bit. What I find 95+% of the time is that if the pitch of a string has moved at all, the right string has gone a little bit sharp and the left string has gone maybe twice that amount flat. I'll be like that on virtually every single note that is making some noise. 
 
What on earth would cause such a phenomenon? 
 
Terry Farrell 
Port-of-Tampa 
 
PS: For any of you with tooooo much time on your hands, you can see my cruise ship (Carnival Legend was today) at the Port of Tampa on live streaming video - the cam is mounted atop the county building downtown Tampa. Go to http://cam01.hillsboroughcounty.org/user/JViewer.html and click on "Control" and click about a quarter inch away from the upper left hand corner of the grey mesh area that appears after you get control of the camera. Way cool, IMHO. The ship was late today and I could simply periodically check my computer to look at this webcam to see when the ship was approaching! 

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