---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment List, Although I have been at this business now for 33 years, I tuned my very first Bosendorfer yesterday. On occasion, people have asked me if I had ever tuned one and the answer has always been that they are such a rare instrument that I have never even touched one except at the Kimball factory in 1982. Although I had not planned to work on Saturday, this was an "emergency" call. The lady who owned the piano lives in a big house that had been in the "Parade of Homes" area about 10 years ago, elegant to say the least. Her 7 foot Bosendorfer (without the super low keys) holds a prominent place that was designed just for it. It has a beautiful wood color (I think walnut), real ivory keytops and ebony sharps. She said the piano was worth $80,000. The emergency was that the damper pedal had stopped working. She said she regularly has musicians and groups over to use the piano and needed it fixed right away. She called Timothy Farley RPT's store to ask for the very best person available. (She did not call the dealer who sold the piano). I was sent. The pedal problem was easy enough, the adjustment nut had traveled down so far that there was so much lost motion that the little dowel link had slipped out of place. I had that all fixed in less than a minute. Now came the shocker: she had not had the piano tuned in 8 years (yipes!) because she didn't know of anyone she could trust to do it justice. She preferred to simply play it the way it was! But, she consented to have me tune it. It was down in pitch about 25 cents. I removed the action, tightened all flanges, spaced a few hammers, burned one shank and set a new hammer line by just picking them up off the rail a bit. I also cleaned the piano out thoroughly. I measured for Inharmonicity using the simple and original "Stretch Factor" reading from the note, F5. This read at 5.5, the same as the Walter Grand that I had tuned at the Temperament Festival at the 1998 PTG Convention. I used that same program to raise the pitch and tune again in 2 passes, tuning the wound strings and the 7th octave aurally as I usually do when using a generic program or program from another piano with a similar scale design. By this time, I had spent about 2 hours. She sensed that the piano was much better now but I told her that I would really like to create a custom program for it. She consented to the triple fee for tuning plus $50 for other work. I spent another 2 hours creating the most careful tuning I have yet done in EBVT. Although I did not tell her anything about temperament or octaves, she talked to me quite a bit while I was doing the cleaning and action work saying that she had heard that some technicians could really make the keys have their proper "colors". I told her that I would do precisely that and that she could expect the most beautiful tuning she had ever heard. She listened to every single note I tuned and how I arrived at it and told me that the whole process was a beautiful as music itself. When all finished, she got out some vocal literature and I sang "Try to Remember" from The Fantastiks and "Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera. She was thrilled at the way her piano sounded and as I left, she was playing Debussy's Claire de Lune. I told her to look up my website later on. She did and this is the note she sent me: <<I am in the process of visiting your website. Is EBVT how you tuned my Bosey today? I shall read on... Needless to say, I am well pleased with the technical work. It is as if the piano has been put back into harness, so that it is now more controllable. At the same time, it is full of delicious surprises. It will be fun to hear a "real" artist play on it! Ann C.>> Today, I took the time to use my SAT II's PTG Exam program to compare the 5.5 "Stretch" calculated program for ET and my EBVT. I chose to read the C3-C4 octave because the partial section is the same except for the note C4 which I extrapolated. Here are the results: (All values are read on Octave 5) Note: C3 C#3 D3 D#3 E3 F3 F#3 G3 G#3 A3 A#3 B3 C4 ET: -3.2 -2.9 -2.5 -2.1 -1.7 -1.2 -0.7 -0.2 +0.3 +0.7+1.2 +1.7 -1.2 EBVT: +1.0 -2.0 0.0+0.5 -3.0 +1.0 -1.5 +2.0+2.0 0.0 +0.5+0.5 +2.0 ERRS: +3 0 +1 +1 -2 +1 -2 +1 0 -1 -1 -1 +2 DIFF: +3.0 -0.3 +1.3 +1.4 -2.5+1.0 -2.0 +1.0 +0.5 -1.9 -1.9 -1.9 +2.0 The "ERRS" column represents "errors" as they would have been scored on the RPT Exam. The "DIFF" column is the actual difference from ET when both temperaments have been averaged. To me, it looks like anyone could use the "ERRS" figures as rough numbers or the "DIFF" figures as fine numbers to use as "correction figures" to an FAC type calculated program. Ron Koval, Robert Scott and anyone else who has tinkered with this, what is your opinion? The EBVT would have scored a 60 on the RPT Exam, formerly "Apprentice" level and well below passing. Once, I scored the EBVT on a Yamaha C7 and got a 73 while a local "concert tuner" who always tunes in Reverse Well got a 54. In either case, the EBVT ended up being "more E than the presumed E". I also think it is interesting to note how the EBVT actual figures have a net difference of +3.0 from theoretical ET and the Stretch ET calculation has a net difference of -11.8. Either way you look at it, the EBVT in its totality is closer to theoretical ET than an ET adjusted for Inharmonicity. So, my reply to anyone who thinks that the EBVT would cause intonation problems by "throwing the singers off" for example would be, "on the contrary, ma'am, it would tend to throw them *on*." I'm hoping that someone like Ron Overs will let me tune his piano in a big concert hall where the artist has the choice of which instrument to use. Ron already proved his piano's superior properties, presumably in ET. So how about the EBVT with Tempered Octaves? I'd be willing to fly to Sydney to prove that it can and will work. Should Ron take the chance or would he be a fool to do so? Let's hear the opinions. My guess is that for every encouraging one, there will be at least 3 "Don't do it, don't let him make a fool of you" opinions. Go ahead, express your opinion, I have very thick skin about this and am quite secure in my beliefs. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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