ear plugs

[John Musselwhite]

>I'm all for protecting our hearing. But if the piano is that loud, shouldn't we
>protect EVERYBODY'S hearing by making it softer? Incidentally, I once talked to
>a professional audiologist and she told me that she didn't see any reason why a
>piano should damage anyone's hearing.

The audiologist should do some investigating before she makes a blanket
statement like that. Has she ever sat by a piano with a db meter while
you're tuning?  Has she taken into account the high-impact volume level of
test blows? A db meter may not even have a fast enough response for that to
show properly.

Remember that test blows, particularly on very large pianos, put out
somewhere around 95 db or more (if I recall) and you're only a couple of
feet from the source. What would she say if she knew you were being
subjected to decibel levels that high a thousand times a day (I wish I was
that busy!)?

>From what I understand, small high-inharmonicity pianos create another set
of problems - those dealing with distortion as well as high db levels. I
know for myself if I tune some spinets or bad small grands (or Concert
grands) I have to take a longer rest between tunings than I do if it's a
Yamaha or Kawai. Is that just because they're harder to tune or does noise
fatigue play a larger role than might be expected?

It's been said that it takes about five thousand decisions to tune a piano -
decisions which for the most part are made by ear. When many of those
decisions are separated by something almost like a gunshot it's no wonder
hearing loss is (or should be) something we have to take into account and
prevent any way we can.

                John


John Musselwhite, RPT               Calgary, Alberta Canada
musselj@cadvision.com       john.musselwhite@67.cambo.cuug.ab.ca