Bottoms Up Pitch Raising

[Randy Potter]

>Regarding pitch raising starting with the lowest note.
>
>	Of course you need an ET to do this. ?   Another concern in older pianos
>is strings breaking.  This is common in the 5th 6th and 7th octaves if it
>does happen.  I would rather tune there first, so to find breaking strings
>in the first fifteen minutes of tuning rather than the last 15 minutes.

There are, of course, many factors relating to string breakage, such as
climatic area (i.e. long term excessive humidity causing rust on strings
to bind them to the upper bearing bar and v-bar, increasing the likelhood
of string breakage) and piano age. In the West, we are blest with fewer
old dog uprights, because folks tend to throw them out of their Conestoga
wagons about half way over the Rockies. But that is another discussion.

What is the difference, though, in having strings break during the first
five or ten minutes of a 20-25 minute pitch raise tuning, as opposed to
the last 15 minutes of the same tuning? We are only talking the
difference between about 10 minutes.

On the other hand, studies have shown that raising pitch from bass to
treble provides a more stable result, because the upper notes drop
farther flat as we increase tension in the lower notes and we can account
for that in our tuning. If we tune them first, the drop more when we
bring the bass up, and we have to tune them again. At least for me, it
takes a lot less time, and produces a more stable result, to raise pitch
from bass to treble. (Of course, this requires something like a SAT, RCT
or PT-100.)

I do not tune from bass to treble, though, because the object of tuning a
piano is to (duh) get it into tune with itself. And you cannot tune the
bass to the center of the piano if the center of the piano is not in
tune, yet. But that, too, is another discussion.

Randy Potter, R.P.T.





Randy Potter, R.P.T.
Randy Potter School of Piano Technology
"Training Competent Piano Technicians for the 21st Century"
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