Fork temp (was C fork/A fork)

Jason Kanter jkanter@rollingball.com
Sun, 28 Apr 2002 09:27:34 -0700


Tommy Black says:
> I use C fork 523.3....always. I must be "right on" A440.

You must be right on 440 if there is zero stretch in the piano (not on this
planet). The tuning fork sets  your "zero" point for stretch, and if that
zero point is C, the A is going to be sharp.

Not by much, though.

Personally I think a bigger source of variation is the temperature of the
tuning fork. I recently bought a C 523.25 fork, chunky aluminum type, and
calibrated it using the Tunelab/NIST procedure that is so easy to do using
Tunelab's instructions. I found that the difference between having the fork
in the toolbox on a cold day, vs. having it under my waistband for 5
minutes, made a difference of just over 10 cents. There was easily a 50-60
degree F temperature difference between those two readings. My waistband
tends to be consistent within a degree, whereas the temperature of the day,
the car, the piano room all may vary a lot. This variation would cause far
more deviation at A than would the degree of stretch.

Spoken without measurements at hand, but someone must have measured the
effect of temperature on a tuning fork. Ron?

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jason kanter * piano tuning * piano teaching
bellevue, wa * 425 562 4127 * cell 425 831 1561
orcas island * 360 376 2799
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