I just wanted to mention a happy discovery from last week. I work at a college 20 hours a week. There are 84 pianos in the music dept., plus another 30 scattered around. So I don't have lots of time to experiment. I have precisely two weeks during the summer when I can schedule miscellaneous things; the rest of the time the schedule is pretty rigorously mapped out. We have two D's on the main performance stage. One is from 1927, and is OK considering. The other one is a from the early 80's. I keep it in good regulation and do some voicing on it. It gets tuned weekly or more. I've been here five years, and I've never really been happy with it. A lot of notes have false beats and bad tones. Termination points seem fine. Some of the more sensitive pianists have complained, but I haven't been able to solve it. I have the Steinway manual, and have always read about levelling strings but have never had time to get to it. I've seen a few of you mention it recently, and I had a day to mess with the piano, so I tried it. I was amazed to find, first, how many unisons were not level, and second, what a dramatic improvement in sound resulted from correcting the situation. I will never again underestimate the importance of this step. Some notes which have been problems from the start, the problem just disappeared. I can't wait for the faculty to get back and start playing on it. I finally enjoy it. So now I'm a better technician, and I'm preaching the good news to anybody who like me was unaware of how important this is. I love this list. Mark Graham Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music
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