>Why do you want to settle unisons during a pitch raise? > >Paul Chick To minimize the battle of setting them during the tuning. At some point during a pitch raise (of any significance) and tuning, you have to get the strings to render through the bridge and roughly equalize segment tensions or your tuning won't be solid. I try to do this on the pitch raise pass to get all the segment tensions as close to where they should end up as I can. Again, there is a difference between long term tuning stability and producing a solid tuning in the first place, and these are usually discussed as if they were the same thing. They ain't. The differences being discussed here between "tuning stability" of strip muting vs mute chasing aren't long term tuning stability concerns at all. They are part of what we deal with in just trying to produce a solid finished tuning, and the only effect on that result the different muting methods will have is a result of how the employed methods fit with the individual tuner's techniques and how close what he thinks he is doing comes to what is actually required for a solid tuning, regardless of whether he's actually doing what he thinks he's doing or not. If the tuner can produce a more solid and finished tuning with individual mutes than with strips, I say go for it. If strips work better for him, then I say go for it. Neither is inherently inferior or superior to the other. The test of whether or not what was intended is what was accomplished is how the tuning sounds after a week or two of normal play in a stable environment - which is something we all have ready access to and check regularly, right? Ron N
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