World Class Junk

[BSimon1234@aol.com]

This list seems to have an abundance of technicians who seem to, almost
exclusively,  tune large Steinways and Baldwins grands every day.  That must
be lovely.  I hope someone might be able to help me with a world class lousy
piano.

I have used a SAT for a number of years, quite successfully. Today I
attempted a tuning on a 1965 Hallet Davis spinet. It reliably, repeatedly,
 gave FAC numbers of 38.2 - 10.1 - 1.1.

This translated to a tuning with octaves beating wildly, at about 3 beats per
second. I measured everything many times, measured the stretch of notes next
to the wild notes, tuned aurally and tried to find a FAC setting that matched
a decent octave, experimented with putting "standard" numbers into the SAT
and seeing how the tuning compared.  Not even close!  I then mused about
adding one cent to the A number to stretch the octaves for pure fifths - ho -
ho - ho ! (:-)

Forgetting about the cracking bass bridge, the dead bass strings, the
majority of strings that beat wildly, the hard hammers, etc., -   what would
you do with a piano like this? No -  don't answer that, it is too obvious.
 What would you do with a SAT to aid in attempting to tune a piano like this?

I finally put the SAT away and did a completely aural tuning, and was
underwhelmed with the results. The customer was delighted.

But really, - what would you do?

Thanks,
Bill Simon