Test Blows...Clarification

[Z! Reinhardt]

I think we're all trying to improve tuning stability.  What works for
someone might not work as well for someone else.  I think anyone would want
industrial earmuffs in addition to the earplugs when pounding everything in
with the sustain pedal held down.

A trick one of the Steinway guys had (John Patton, I believe) was to nudge a
string in the speaking length with a hammer shank in conjunction with the
test blows, the idea being that it should also hold up to being nudged.
(Don't push it too far or you'll disrupt the the other string it shares a
hitchpin with.)  This works particularly well in the 5th and 6th octaves.

For those of you who know anything about Yamaha Disklaviers ...!  Tune one
of those things like you normally would, then run the keyboard measurement
function.  It will give itself the testblows, both with and without the
sustain pedal.  Then go back and make your corrections.  (The first time I
did this, my tuning efforts got shredded.  That was 9 years ago.  I'm still
working at stability, still trying to figure out how to do a tuning that can
withstand the abuse these Disklaviers can dish out.)

Z! Reinhardt  RPT
Ann Arbor  MI
diskladame@provide.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike and Jane Spalding" <mjbkspal@execpc.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 11:48 PM
Subject: Re: Test Blows...Clarification


Hi Corey,

I'm also working at improving my tuning stability, and worried that my test
blows are not doing enough to settle the string.  The current routine is to
tune with relatively hard blows, watch ETD/listen with soft blows, when it
sounds good, hit a couple hard test blows then watch/listen softly one last
time.  At the end of the tuning pass,  I hold the damper pedal down and
pound octaves up and down the keyboard with both hands (I read about this
somewhere, I think it was attributed to Norm Neblett).  The idea is to get
as much energy into the bridge as you can, to shake out any unequal tension
accross the bridge.  (It also brings the piano owner back out to see what
you're doing.)  Seems to work - there's always a handful of strings (usually
just unisons) to correct.  My goal is to learn to tune so that the octave
pounding doesn't change the tuning.

Hope this helps,

Mike Spalding

----- Original Message -----
From: <SimsPiano@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:39 PM
Subject: Test Blows...Clarification


> Hi all,
> I should make my technique clearer.  This is just something I'm trying out
> and may not stick to.  I'm doing this partly, because most of the test
blows
> I do, don't knock the string out of tune....so here's my procedure.
>
> 1. tune piano with no test blows.
> 2. put earplugs in, take both hands and hit keys in pairs (saves even more
> time) about 5 times each as a test blow.
> 3.  check bass notes.
> 4.  listen to unisons and fix any noisemakers.
>
> I'm also thinking that the chances of a test blow knocking all 3 strings
of a
> trichord out equally are really slim, so I'm just listening for bad
unisons,
> mostly.
>
> OK....now......FIRE AT WILL ;)...and thanks again for all the previous
> replies,
> Corey
>