Tuning Steinway Verticals

[Jeff Tanner]

Jim Harvey wrote:
>#3. Karla Pfennig, a former PTG member and tuning examiner, sailed through
>her original tuning test. It happened that her own piano, and
>coincidentally her tuning 'practice' piano was a '1098'. She was ignorant
>about the peculiarities of this model and just toughed it out. Needless to
>say tuning -any- other piano thereafter was like falling off a log.
>
>Regards,
>-jh-

I concur.  I've tuned a bunch of these over the years.  After you learn to
tune these, most anything else is a breeze.

However, new ones?  Last new ones I tuned had tuning pins so tight the
casters would come off the floor when you pulled the tuning hammer.  Then,
there's the "surprise" pins!  (you know, the ones where you get ready to
pull hard, you hear "snap!" and all of a sudden the pitch has jumped a
major third?)

So, I agree with what some of you said last week, that I don't think it's a
problem at all with rendering.  You can just bump the pin and the pitch
changes.  It's how tight those pins are and how far the coil is from the
block, which creates the flagpoling, that makes them so hard to tune.

Oh, and the false beats.

Ed, use your VTD if you want to keep what hair you have left.  Just dig in,
and don't expect it to sound like a Yamaha when you're finished.

The other weird thing to watch for is when you're pounding the keys, some
notes actually come out quieter than with a normal blow.

Jeff

Jeff Tanner, RPT
Piano Technician
School of Music
813 Assembly ST
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803)-777-4392
jtanner@mozart.sc.edu