Accuholism- New machine for TunerJeff (gasp!)

[Stephen F Schell]

Dear Jeff and List,



Congratulations on Santa's thoughtful baby blue gift! I'm sure that you
will find that, over time, that it is truly "the gift that keeps on
giving". I really enjoyed your comments, as many of them rang true and
are probably almost universal.


Don't let the irksome comments from the peanut gallery get you down for
even a moment; staunch aural tuners who sneer at state of the art ETDs
(electronic tunind devices) are displaying a defensive reaction which,
like most any prejudice, is based on fear and ignorance. Sure, there are
plenty of tuners out there who use an ETD because they wouldn't have a
prayer of tuning a piano aurally, but to my way of thinking their
clients are still better off than if they were just struggling along
aurally. And they should not be confused with accomplished tuners who
have really applied themselves to develop their craft and attain a high
skill level; most evolve to the use of an ETD because it furthers their
goal of attaining the finest results in a practical manner. Have
patience with those who show displeasure, and let them learn from your
good example. It can be upsetting to struggle for years to learn good
aural tuning only to have most of your friends and colleagues "defect"
to an Accutuner or similar device. I know the feeling, as I was there
about ten years ago. However, we have not traded in our ears; we are
simply aural tuners who avail ourselves of every legitimate method of
improving our work.


                                                     I agree with your
comments about the high quality unisons possible with the SAT. I have
been tuning all plain wire unisons one string at a time for about five
years now. You seem worried about achieving good stability. I think that
, with practice, your stability may actually improve. Mine sure has. You
can blast away on that single string until you are confident that it is
stable, and at the pitch you intended for it, not the pitch the
reference string has drifted to while you were tuning the unison. I
still tune all wound string unisons by ear, however. These unisons
generally have much more disagreement among the different partial levels
than plain wire unisons, and as you said, the SAT can only listen to one
partial at a time.


       The real beauty of the SAT is the ability to create and store
custom 88 note tunings. One remarkable feature, unknown in the world of
purely aural tuning, is the ability to improve a tuning over time. On
frequently serviced instruments, you can apply your custom stored
tuning, then spend a few minutes troubleshooting it, tweaking some notes
a few tenths of a cent here or there, and storing the changes for future
use. This can really result in Greatness In, Greatness Out.


                                                   I can't comment from
experience on the FAC program, as my SAT is an old, gas operated, pre
FAC machine. My basic approach in tuning and storing tunings is to use a
carefully chosen "stretch" tuning from C3 To C5, then tune using a
combination of aural and visual monitoring of several intervals,
basically hovering around pure 12ths in the treble and pure to expanded
6-3 octaves in the bass. In memory I store the first partial from C5 up,
and the 6th partial from C3 down.


           Enjoy your new SAT, TunerJeff, and please let us know how
things work out.

                                         Steve Schell

                                     stfrsc@juno.com