[CAUT] Sacrifice (was tuners- technology)

[Fred Sturm]

On 3/3/05 8:42 PM, "Don" <pianotuna@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Could you please let us know what notes you chose to measure?

    Didn't pay specific attention to the notes. Octaves 4 and 5, notes with
good resolution (ETD display) for all three strings. I can't see why it
would matter what specific note one chose (might matter where it was in
relationship to a plate strut with concurrent change in notching pattern or
cutaway). My take from my experimentation was that, while it might be quite
possible one would get a consistent result a few times in a row, one could
also be quite certain to get inconsistent results. And the variability of
the readings seemed to outweigh any consistency whatsoever.
    Of course, as Jim Ellis points out, there's enough variability between,
shall we say, prompt and sustain pitch to account for any number of
different readings by different people using different criteria to decide
"when the lights/display are stopped."
    My point was mostly to try to undermine the claim of a unison having a
"significant" difference in pitch from that of the individual strings. If
there is a consistent difference, one direction or the other, it is so tiny
as to be of no practical value to the tuning of a piano.
    OTOH, using the notion as a mental picture may lead people to tune
better, because they may stretch their octaves a bit more than they would
otherwise. It's somewhat like the old imagery of a tuning pin, supposedly
wedged into the bottom of its hole in the pinblock. The idea being that one
lifts the pin from its resting point when raising pitch, then sets the pin
back into its rest position. Frankly, this is utter nonsense from a
scientific point of view. But the imagery has helped any number of tuners
learn to achieve a greater degree of stability.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico