self tuning piano????

[David Ilvedson]

When all is said and done and the piano is built, it will be a Story & Clark piano...

David I.



----- Original message ---------------------------------------->
From: Bill Ballard <yardbird@pop.vermontel.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Received: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 18:38:27 -0400
Subject: Re: self tuning piano????

>At 8:38 AM -0400 7/3/02, Jon Page wrote:
>>If it is tuned in the factory, only a factory specialist will be
>>qualified to tune it once the tuning gets really of whack.
>>Imagine the price tag that service will bring.

>At 8:50 PM -0400 7/1/02, Bill Ballard wrote:
>>That's when the regional airport limo brings in the Factory Re-Tuner
>>(accept no substitutes), to do a >manual tuning (again, locked upon
>>completion).

>At 8:38 AM -0400 7/3/02, Jon Page wrote:
>>I wonder if there will be the offshoot tuning aid. On rmmp
>>he also talked of a unit which can be used on any piano.
>>This unit had a pickup for each wire and magnetically
>>attached itself to adjacent strings. The piano owner turns the
>>pin until the display is flat (bars ascending or decending from zero).
>>Move the pickup over one unison, set the display to zero.

>You're not describing an thermal tuning but a mechanical one. And if
>it really is no more than a visual indicator for the tone deaf (with
>goose-neck hammer and mutes tossed in), that's a pretty dumb idea
>compared to Gilmore's thermal tuner. The only difference between this
>set-up and equipping yourself with the current ETDs is that the ETDs
>take to acoustic sound in and run it through a digital Signal
>Processor, where as this read the string's motion electromagnetically.

>What is "rmmp"? It seems to be a second source for details on the
>Gilmore/QRS system. Is this where the promise that this piano can
>still be manually tuned comes from (in contradiction to Gilmore's own
>PTJ article)? Also the business about Delrin aggrapphes?

>>The piano can be tuned in twenty minutes.  It only samples the
>>fundamental because the other
>>harmonics are not needed according to the inventor.

>Yeah, right. Sounds like another instance of an inventor having
>steadfastly refused to inform himself of the real facts of pianos.

>>I think it will give a whole new
>>meaning to tuning instability to a new group of pin benders.

>It may just prove that the market to be cornered by making human
>piano tuners obsolete is not big enough to make it a worthwhile
>business venture.


>Bill Ballard RPT
>NH Chapter, P.T.G.


>"A jester unemployed is nobody's fool."
>     ...........Danny Kaye, in "The Court Jester"
>+++++++++++++++++++++