Ron N, The Francis Bacon Grand you mentioned intrigued me for a few reasons. First of all I've never seen one, hence I have no idea what kind of duplex scale they have. If it's a nineteenth century piano, chances are that the duplex scale did have merit as all the pianos of that vintage that I have examined are based on sound harmonic principles. A second thought occurred to me in response to your "repositioned for some reason" phrase. Apparently some technician thought that the tone could be improved by moving the duplex, otherwise why would a tech attempt to move it. In this case because f your appraisal method does not seem to have included comparing the pitches of the duplex segments to the speaking length, there's no way to know if the tech who moved the uplex was successful or not. And with the condition of the tuning as bad as it was, according to your report, any work on the duplex would be premature and most probably inexact. To work on duplex tuning, at least in my experience, the piano must be up to pitch and relatively stable. As far as doing it "every day" is concerned, a price of a duplex tuning could be anywhere from $250 to $500. I could use one of them every day. PS. Would it be possible to get a picture of the duplex scale system? I would like to try to analyze it to include it in my updated Duplex Scale Field Manual Guide. Thank You Dan Franklin Duplexdan@AOL.com
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