In a message dated 6/14/99 8:10:17 AM Central Daylight Time, you write: << The piano had not been tuned in "years" according to the curator of the Historical Society, yet the piano was only 10 cents flat from A440 in the middle section. Someone mentioned that they were stable--is it possible to be this stable for many years?? >> Tuning stability or perhaps *perceived* stability can vary an astonishing amount from piano to piano. A brand new piano of the highest quality and reputation can lose pitch drastically if it is not tuned often and repeatedly during its first 5 years or so. This is also true of rebuilt or restrung pianos. (Just witness what happens to a replaced string in an otherwise stable piano. It is always disproportionately unstable to the rest.) Here, in the upper midwest, it is not uncommon for me to see a shift of as much as 60 cents from winter to summer in the low tenor of pianos which are depended upon for fairly serious use in places where humidity control is nonexistent. I will typically find a nice, studio piano in a school room to be at or approaching +30 cents in the low tenor in late August (unless it has humidity control). The music director or teacher wants to get down to business and has the right to expect that the piano be at Standard Pitch (or at least somewhere reasonably close) and in tune with itself to begin the semester's study. If the pitch on such a piano is lowered to A-440, it will be 10 cents flat by the end of October and it will keep on going to about-30 cents by mid January. On the other hand, I have tuned many older pianos, upright and grand alike, many of which are called "PSO's" by some on this List, that apparently drift less than 10 cents from summer to winter and many of which are tuned rather infrequently (once every 2 or 3 years at best) and yet remain well enough in tune to be perfectly satisfying to their owners. One of the piano dealers I work for tells its customers that an older, used piano can have the advantage that it is what they called "seasoned". By this, it is meant that the piano is somehow resistant to humidity changes and tends to hold pitch year after year. My guess is that the Haddorff piano that John F. encountered was a combination of a well built piano that was tuned regularly and frequently early in its existence and became "seasoned" to the climate it is kept in. He may have also been fortunate to have seen the piano when it was between seasonal extremes where he might have found it much flatter or even apparently closer to standard pitch, at least in the middle. Although it is "seldom appropriate" as PTG literature states, to tune to a nonstandard pitch, considering that there might be other important work that should be done but the customer "just wants it tuned" now (to see if the tuner is any good), it may be well advisable in this instance to change the pitch of that piano as little as possible but create a beautiful and stable tuning that will lead to the customer's confidence in the technician. It is not the technician's fault that the piano "has not been tuned in years" yet the customer expects to evaluate the technician's skills based on a single attempt at tuning while still neglecting other needed services. While pitch raising techniques work and are appropriate when the situation arises, they can also "backfire" in others. If the piano has truly been as stable as John observed, it may well be more appropriate in this situation not to disturb the aspect of this piano which has been the most positive. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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