Hello Don I don't think I answered the 15cents question adequately - or did I? I did say in one of my "inputs" to this site that I frequently am called upon to tune a piano "up to Pitch" - i.e. A = 440 - and do so at one sitting (or standing) if the piano merits such treatment. Such a piano may well have been regularly "tuned" at the wrong pitch 'cos the tuner had either not the time or the inclination to bring it up. It usually takes about 90 minutes to coarse-tune followed by a fine tune. And the piano is always very grateful - if you see what I mean. Thereafter it stays better in tune and the wonderful thing is hearing an apparently "dead" piano come back to life... So, in answer to your "heretical" understanding as things are over the water, here it is considered important that the correct pitch is obtained. Even if it means going past that 15cent limit - and a semitone is something like 100cents - is it not? To get the piano to such a pitch change involves taking some strings well over the 100cent change, because in the final anaylsis, they will drop back the required amount. Now to new strings: re-stringing. The same applies in a way. The overall pitch must be increased in stages of a decreasing amount to each stage. This is because the new strings are going on to a copmpletely relaxed/untensioned freame. But I'm sure that many of these stages are in excess of your 15cents. This may be heresy but it works. And always use new Wrest-pins! We cannot spend too much time theorising about the "why's and wherefore's" if the end justifies the means - otherwise you get totally bogged down by worries about the 15cent "heresy" business. But your *clean and jerk* is something I'm not sure I interpret correctly. So what do these terms mean in English? Over to you Regards Michael G (UK)
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC