Hi, Terry: I "cut my teeth" doing floor work for a Baldwin dealer from 1980 to 1985. Incredibly tight pins in some of the grands, which meant eventually I could just about tune anything. I learned to go through a piano twice as quickly as possible, with moderate hard blows the last time through but not wasting time on perfection, focusing on unisons. Two passes will usually get the best results, following standard pitch raise/lowering formula. You should push yourself to get your time down to 30-40 minutes total for both passes. I always strip muted the entire piano - saves at least 10 minutes. And Richard is right about humidity. Several articles can be found in the Journal about this, and the pianotech archives are full of this subject. In southern California we experience wide extremes of humidity and not as great a variance in temperature as the rest of the country. You can tune a piano after a week of rain, but a day or two after a dry high pressure system has begun, and a day or two later it will drop 10-20 cents. Just because of the abrupt drop in RH. Mild fluctuations in RH will also move the tenor up and down and make you look bad. Don't worry much about the heater being turned down at night in LA; the big problem is the big change in air moisture content, and that is exacerbated by the fact that most of the pianos you are tuning are new, so the SB's are at their most dimensionally unstable. But if you are willing to learn, you will quickly develop tuning skills and speed. Just listen to your body at the first sign of tendonitis etc., and back off and rest for a while when you need to. You can build tuning endurance and stamina - It sounds like you already are! My feeling about pounding (relating to Richard's response) is that for floor work a single, moderately hard blow is all you should give after a firm movement/set of the tuning pin. However, that is no insurance of a rock-solid tuning, just a servicable floor tuning. What is the point of repeated pounding when the piano is so unstable anyway? However, I have always used repeated blows in C&A work, and played the piano hard afterwards if there was time, fixing errant unisons as they popped up. I think the best training for C&A is the dealer work, where you develop speed and confidence. Bill Shull In a message dated 00-03-04 19:00:12 EST, you write: << Once again, the sun streaming in, sometimes directly on sound boards, and no heat at night can't help the painos stay in tune. But I do my best given all the conditions, and they seem to sound nearly as good from day to day, when i check them randomly. Every so often I'll find that a piano I tuned 2-3 weeks earlier has dropped a tad in the high treble, or a unison or 2 has slipped, in which case I'll do a quick touch-up. Terry >>
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