test blows

[Dave Nereson]

I've heard stories that Franz Mohr used extremely hard test blows when
tuning.  Of course, I've also heard that his tunings were rock-solid
stable.  There seems to be a correlation here.

Any further comments?

Corte Swearingen
Chicago

    I think there's more to stability than hard test blows, namely, setting the pin properly, which I'm never 100% sure I'm doing.  A fellow tech claims that many soft test blows are as good as a few hard ones.  I dunno, I think you need some force to get the string to render through the bridge pins and the capo, agraffe, or pressure bar.
    I'm certainly not going through the following hassle:
<<Third step tap at the hitch pin, before and after rear duplex, before
bridge pin, on bridge pin, in front of bridge pin, middle of the string
length on the bridge, behind sounding length bridge pin, on sounding length
bridge pin, sounding length, and lift strings on tuning pin side of
aggraff.>>  Not without charging quite a bit extra, anyhow.
    <<The coils had never been tapped and the pitch dropped over 100 cents on some notes.>>
 Yes, but what I find more often are beckets that need squeezing farther into the pin.  Sometimes the coils need pulling up as much as tapping down, to get them tightly against each other and square to the pin.
    And, rock-solid only lasts until the humidity changes enough to swell or relax the soundboard.  What's puzzling is that some older pianos hardly drift out of tune at all, even over a period of 5 years.    
    --David Nereson, RPT