[pianotech] Old can of worms (was Re: tunelab vs verituner)

[Ed Foote]

Will writes:


 But there are also plenty 
of pianos where the pitch will wander up or down in ways that are not 
predictable, and will do so no matter which method is used.  I can hear it 
happen aurally, and quantify it by the machine if I want to.  I make several 
passes before fine tuning, and I also know some good ETD tuners who will make 3 
passes on some of these beasts because their ear and the machine tells them that 
is what it takes to get it right.  Sometimes the piano is 10 cents flat and 
misbehaves as described, sometimes it is 60 cents flat and acting this way.  

Greetings, 
   Ok,  my logic button just got jammed.  I have never made three passes on anything before fine tuning, and I don't understand why it could even be necessary.  
     A piano that is 60 cents flat is not going to be in tune a week later, at least, not any closer than you would leave it after one pitch raise and a fine tuning.  Doing three passes and then fine tuning is wasting time and effort.  If you happened to be in a recording studio with a 50 cent flat piano, things are already weird.  In that case, a second prep pass might be needed, but the piano is still going to be loose in a week.      A piano that is only 10 cents flat overall, or even only in places, is a simple chore.   The SAT will leave that piano within 1 cent of final in about 20 minutes.  I don't have any trouble tuning to broadcast standards from 1 cent away in one pass.  
     I do think that many users of ETD's are simplistic in their pitch raising. Setting it once each octave as the pitch raising progresses  from top to bottom might  send the heedless  tuner astray.      I measure the pitches across the piano before deciding what to do, and I do it with single strings, loose unisons don't provide very dependable information. 
      I have seen Yamaha C3's that were 10 cents flat in the low tenor, but by C5 were still at pitch. I wouldn't pitch raise more than the first couple of those notes on a 2.5 cent offset before I began taking my offsets from a fifth above where I am tuning.  This tapering in and out of correction values is light years beyond my aural pitch raising skills, (and they were pretty good).      Rare is the piano that is in tune with itself but  just off pitch.  It is more often that there will be sections higher or lower than others, and the careful use of the ETD will allow sufficient compensation during the pitch raise to leave the piano ready for as fine a tuning as one is capable of.     


          The machine is just a tool, a very sophisticated tool.  If used in ignorance, it will produce poor results. Used in full awareness of what it can do, it has proven to be an indispensable asset in producing accurate and repeatable tunings with the least amount of time and stress.  Used as a repository of our finest tuning on a given piano, the ETD allows users to recreate that tuning later, and as we use it repeatedly, we can polish it till it shines, allowing us a degree of refinement that the aural tuner doesn't have access to.  Aurally, I had to re-invent the wheel every piano; electronically, I have all that experience hard-wired, right there in my hand. This allows me to spend my energy on unisons,where the machines do poorly.
        I don't understand those that think they produce a superior tuning using just their ears,as opposed to another tuner that is using his ears AND a machine. There is room for everyone, but in my career, the economics of the business sure favor using technology. 
Regards,


Ed Foote RPT
http://www.piano-tuners.org/edfoote/index.html

 


 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20120511/4090d41e/attachment.htm>