Well, I do it so automatically now that I had to take a bit of time to think about what it was that was actually taking place. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 4:34 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bechstein model B tuning stability Hi David, Well stated. Your original post seemed a bit timid: "A very conscious rotary motion with even a slight forward press" which kind of sounded like you didn't really mean it about the forward press. I was just trying to say "right on! press that hammer down with no apologies!" I agree with you 100%. Including about the worst scenario (though an extra loose block with lots of friction runs a close second). Fred On Oct 18, 2009, at 4:31 PM, David Love wrote: The basic idea is that you manipulate the pin with counter pressure to the natural tendency for the pin to twist so that the change in pitch only reflects actual movement of the pin in the block. At least that's what I meant in the original post. With the hammer at 12:00 you can press slightly downward which will move the pin toward the string as you are turning the pin and it is twisting before it actually moves in the block. With practice you can learn to feel the amount of downward pressure needed to negate the pitch change associated with the twisting of the pin. When you release the downward pressure and also allow the pin to relax with some practice those two forces will remain net neutral. This allows you to creep up to the target pitch rather than have to pull it a bit sharp and set it downward as this is particularly difficult with high friction in the string bearing segments. The best way to learn this is with an ETD where you can actually see what's happening while you feel the pin. The amount of pressure needed to compensate for twisting will change depending on how tight the block is. The worst possible scenario is severe friction through the string segments combined with an overly tight block. Usually, Bechstein pianos (at least older ones) don't suffer from overly tight blocks and the ones that are open faced minimize the flagpolling effect because of the close proximity of the hammer pin contact to the block itself. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 9:45 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bechstein model B tuning stability On Oct 17, 2009, at 3:53 PM, Jeannie Grassi wrote: Hi Fred, and anyone else, Can you take your description of downward and upward motion a step further? I've been hearing conflicting descriptions of this recently in private communications. What I'm asking is specifically..when the pitch needs to go up, do you lift up on the end of the tuning lever at the same time there is a slight rotation to sharpen? And conversely, does one push down and rotate slightly flat? I've had the opposite described and just want to get a sense of how most people interpret this deliberate flag-poling motion. I've always used it the way I've described. Have I been climbing up the wrong flagpole all these years???? :>) jeannie Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091018/35717aa6/attachment-0001.htm>
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