My recent request to unsubscribe seems to have gone missing! Anyone know what one should try next?...and I don't mean brain surgery:-) P Sent from my iPhone On Aug 12, 2010, at 11:03 AM, tannertuner <tannertuner at bellsouth.net> wrote: > --- On Thu, 8/12/10, Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> wrote: > > Yep, late summer early fall is the worst time of year most places. > Here, every single piano is quite sharp and unusably out of tune > with itself, raucous and nasty. I start in four weeks before > semester, running through all the pianos. The tuning doesn't hold > real well, but it is a lot better starting point than if I started > later -in which case I'd never catch up. They are still absorbing > moisture and going sharp through September, so what I do early will > go sharp and come back in about October, which makes it better than > if I tune at the top of the moisture content. The critical pianos > I'll be seeing often enough to keep them up. > > That's the way it used to be in the Southeast - or at least at the > colleges I've worked for. 70-80% relative humidity in college > buildings in August is pretty common here, with low tenor sections > being 40 cents sharp, and you could always expect a cold snap before > the end of September, which, with the flip of a switch completely > undid all 125 of those pianos you put 5 weeks of very grueling work > into tuning, and there would be where we got on the roller coaster > until the end of Spring semester, when the humidity came back again > for good.. But the last few years, maybe 7 to 9 years now, fall > climate has been completely different. Every year you now wait for > the mid semester changes that never come, and then the first cold > snap of the year came inevitably over Thanksgiving break, with 10 > days to try to schedule a bunch of tunings before exams. But you > can't schedule expecting that, because it is not typically seasonal. > > It seems the quarter system was much friendlier for piano tunings > than is the semester system. Fall quarter did not start until late > September, and spring quarter tunings were generally more stable as > you got out of the months wrought with deep cycling of humidity. > > Fred, gotta say I don't know how you do it as a half time tech. > > Last couple of days I've tuned a couple grands in a couple homes > where owners don't try to fight the temperature changes. July 09, > 79-82 degrees, 50-55% RH. January, 56-62 degrees (yes, Fahrenheit), > humidity mid 30s. No humidity control, no Dampp-Chasers. I raise > pitch in July/August and lower it in January, no more than 2 or 3 > cents each way. That was not a typo. Raise pitch in summer, lower it > in winter. None of this 40 cent pitch swings like in college work, > AND, the pitch change is much more consistent from section to section. > > Jeff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100812/855b8d29/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC