Muting Pattern

[cswearingen@daigger.com]

Hello List,

Since I started tuning part time about 3 years ago, I have always strip
muted the entire tenor and treble sections.  I use a Verituner and set the
center string of each tri-chord, check aurally, and once I'm satisfied, I
pull in the unisons (always aurally).

I would like to try switching to tuning unisons as I go.  Can someone
experienced in this tell me their technique in moving the mutes around
(since strip muting is no longer an option with this method)?

Do you use two mutes, one split mute, etc.  I prefer to only tune one
string of a unison to another string so I want to try and avoid the
situation where I'm tuning one string of a tri-chord to the other two open
strings of the tri-chord.  However, I'm not sure if their is an efficient
muting pattern for this.

Any suggestions or ideas you could provide would be great.

By the way, thanks with all your suggestions on voicing down my Yamaha U1.
Here is the procedure I decided to try.

1.  50/50 alcohol/water solution applied to the hammers
2.  Taking a very small layer of felt off the hammers and then polishing
with 320 grit emery cloth (I reshaped the hammers about 6 months ago so no
further reshaping needed to be done)
3.  Ironed the hammers

This produced the desired rich warm tone I had wanted for the longest time.
Next time, I'm going to try the steam method.  Thanks again for your
advice!

Thanks,
Corte Swearingen
Chicago