SAT magnetic pick up

[Joel A. Jones]

>Dick,
>   I once heard of a someone who had to tune a piano on a "gymatorium"
>stage while a gym class was going on. He used a stethoscope! Of course,
>this was in the "good ol'days" prior to SAT's! <G>
>
>>For what it's worth, I actually find that I use the magnetic pickup very
>>little. but when I do it's a mind-saver.  Like the example of tuning in a day
>>room with 20 noisy mental patients and rap music on the TV.  Or the time I
>>had to do a quick tuning on a badly out of tune console piano at a County
>>Fair with a ride blaring out 100 DB Rock music about 5O yards away.  I walked
>>away with 70 bucks after about 1-1/4.  Try that with you in the machine mike
>>or worse yet with just your ears.  I know some would have walked away and not
>>done the tuning, but I have $70 dollars that they don't have.
>>
>>Regards to all,
>>Dick Day
>>Marshall MI
>
>_____________________________________
>Avery Todd, RPT
>Moores School of Music
>University of Houston
>Houston, TX 77204-4893
>713-743-3226
>atodd@uh.edu
>_____________________________________


Avery, Dick

I believe that was Doug Strong at Indiana.  As I remember his tale  the
room was double booked.  He was to have the time and nothing was going on
in the room.   As we have all experienced about 10 minutes into the tuning,
a class of screeming children came inside to have the remainder of their
gym class.  Not to be overpowered Doug happened to have a stethoscope in
his case that he used to isolate clicks and buzzes so he pulled it out and
hung it near the strings he was tuning.
        I have never had to use this trick, but there are many times when I
have needed it.  This past week I was tuning in a hospital lobby.  The
interruptions and noise of people wandering thro are enough problem, but
this evening the cleaning crew decided to dry the carpet they had just
cleaned.  When the floor fan came on to blow air over the carpet I lost all
contact with reality.  Time for 'virtual' tuning.
        That's when I asked myself why I haven't listened to Jim Coleman
more and learned  about the SAT.  The learning curve seemed impossible to
me at the time, but hey, can we say 'virtual' tuning ?