Hi Alan, I have not had the identical scenario--but did have one large upright many years ago that had been tuned 100 cents sharp and had been there for ten years. It did just about what the sharp strings on your piano did. I.E. crept back sharp about 90 cents after the first tuning. Plate flex takes time to "relax" You don't mention how you found the unisons. Was there a "pattern" to them as well (one string sharper than the rest?) I also suspect that the bass was more stable than the wound strings. Yes/no? At 07:26 PM 12/16/2008 -0500, you wrote: >List, > I just had my second go-around at trying to get a piano that had been >tuned in an unusual way for a long time back to "normal".  It was in a >tuning that had some notes near normal tension, others up to a quarter-tone >flat, and still others as far sharp(!).  In addition, the piano had been >in that tuning for the past eight years (most of them in Germany--it is a >1904 Schwechten grand with a bridge design I've not seen before).  > On my first visit to start the long journey home to equal temperament >at A=440, I started by doing a pass using the pitch-change function on an >Accutuner (which determines off-sets for each note independently of what >came before, and I measured for every note).  That got it close enough to >follow immediately with a straight machine tuning (with recalculated FAC), >unisons-as-you-go from A0 to C8.  The piano had been vastly transformed, >although I cautioned that there were no guarantees how long it would sound >in tune. > The owner reported that the piano started going out of tune within >weeks of the last servicing.  When I returned for a follow-up visit three >and a half months later, I was unprepared for what I encountered.  Some >notes, the ones that had been sharp, had crept back up in pitch, many >nearly 100% (!!) of the way back up to where they had been for those eight >long years. > I've done many alternate tunings, almost always lowering pitch and >never raising individual notes more than 10 cents or so.  But after a >pitch-raise and a tuning or two, things have always returned to normal in a >rather predictable way.  I have never tuned notes 50 cents sharp nor have >I ever left an alternative tuning on a piano for more than a few weeks at a >shot.  (Last week we tuned a concert grand to select instruments from one >of our Balinese gamelans, but the piano spent less than a week from the >first "Balinese" tuning to the retuning to ET @440.) > Has anyone else out there had any experience with notes and/or entire >pianos being tuned sharp for prolonged periods of time?  If so, did you >observe the same kind of behavior upon retuning?  What would be the most >efficient way to get it back to "normal"? > & Happy Holidays, > Alan Eder Regards, Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.P.T. Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat mailto:pianotuna at yahoo.com http://us.geocities.com/drpt1948/ 3004 Grant Rd. REGINA, SK, S4S 5G7 306-539-0716
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