Hello all, Thanks to everyone for their responses to my questions. I hope to have a chance to try several of the suggestions today or tomorrow, and some I'll have to wait until I get the materials, but I'll let everyone know how it goes. David (Porritt), thanks for your suggestion to move the strip closer to the hammers. I was more or less mindful of this before, but I'll be more careful to see if this is part of what's going on. Sometimes the strip is pinching more at the top (on an upright) than the bottom of the strip, so maybe even when it's pretty close to the hammer line, being mindful of the possibility it's not putting much pressure on the string lower down will help. Joe, thank you for the several suggestions you made. I rescued most of the original Randy Potter strip, which is not as dense, but is thicker than the one I'm using. I also found a thicker strip of untapered felt that I don't know the original purpose for. But I cut it in half and will try one half as it is, and the other half I moistened and am pressing between two clamped boards so it will be about the same as the regular temperament strips, but denser. So I will have several thicknesses, densities, and material types of temperament strips to try when I get back at it and I'm pretty hopeful it'll help things go better. I think I can get an idea why you use the rounded, stubby rubber wedges -- I did notice that sometimes pushing the strip between two strings seemed a pretty tight fit, as the spaces between the unisons are not all the same, even within one or other of the two pianos I've been tuning on, though it never caused any strings to slide on the V-bar as far as I know. Do you use the kind with the wire handles, or the bigger kind without? What is 'a split mute with a steel strap handle'? Do you know where I can see a picture of something like that? I probably won't be able to budget for any Verituner or anything like that anytime soon, but if I can straighten out the sound card on my desktop PC and lug to where the piano is, I can play with TuneLab and learn more from that. I learned a lot last year when I used it to help rescale an autoharp for fun, so I have a slight introduction to it already that makes me curious -- but my soundcard has a defect that adds a whole lot of noise that makes inharmonicity readings erratic. Thanks Jurgen for your helpful feedback which seems to confirm my suspicion that if one or more strings of the unison is pretty far off, the bleed through from it will confuse the tuning of the undamped string more. I did find on the Bush & Lane, as you say, that I had to get all three strings of the unison pretty close to their final pitches -- actually the whole piano pretty close to pitch -- before I could begin to set the temperament very precisely or solidly. I will see how I do with the various strips I have rounded up, and may be ordering a new strip or two soon -- what do you think about the idea of using action-cloth that David Nereson, Paul McCloud and James Grebe suggested? David suggested action cloth or spring-rail cloth (which on one of the pianos I have here is just plain felt), Paul suggested "action cloth" which I'm not sure what it is unless it's hammer-rest cloth and/or keybed backrail cloth and/or spring-rail cloth, and James suggested green keybed backrail cloth. David (Nereson), thanks for your detailed response. What do you mean by 'action cloth', though? I've never been too clear on what this specifically means. I think I'm starting to get the picture that, as you say, it's just a matter of having a few options around and finding the one that fits and damps best. Also, like you say, having the damped strings of the unison roughed in helps, which I definitely have noticed. (And besides, like Jurgen said, if the outside strings aren't really close to begin with, your middle string will change when you tune the outside strings later.) This M&H is actually a 50" upright, so there isn't any duplex. Speaking of weird background noises, the Bush & Lane has an overall resonance of some sort at about Ab -- I couldn't even say what octave it centers on, but it has audible effects on Ab1, Ab2 and Ab3, and affects tuning on the Ab in the 4th octave. Both bass Abs sound noticeably more resonant than neighboring notes. It's not due to any undamped strings or anything, it seems to exist independent of the strings. Do you have any idea off-hand where in the piano such a resonance comes from? If you tune Ab3 close to it but not right at it, for example, it makes its pitch sound muddled (and my inexpensive Seiko ETD keeps jumping around as though the pitch is wavering between two centers). Thanks David (Ivedson) for your comments about rubber temp strips. Let me see if I understand what you're suggesting about using two temp strips -- one is used to damp just, say, the left outside string, then you come back with another and damp the right outside string. That way, when you go to tune the unisons to themselves, instead of the sequence of doing one outside string, then the other, then doing the first outside string of the next one, etc., you can tune just one outside string throughout the entire temperament before proceeding to tune the other outside strings. Do I have that right? Paul, thanks for your response. I asked David Nereson this, too, but what specifically is meant by "action cloth"? Is there a certain part of the action of an upright that I can look at to see this kind of cloth? I keep thinking maybe it's the hammer rest-rail cloth, but I'm just guessing. Also, I'm not too sure I get what you mean by pushing the loops up and down to put the strip at an angle. Can you explain that? I think I understand the other part where you say the closer the loops are to the string, the tighter it will be -- In other words, when you push it between the strings, if you push it too far back (or don't tug it back out a little) as you go on, the springiness of where it folds over on itself won't aid in putting pressure on the strings. Am I getting it? When you speak of two strips running in parallel, it sounds like you don't mean what David Ivedson meant, where one strip damps one outside string, and the other damps the opposite ones. I'm reading what you say as more directly addressed to damping the strings more thoroughly by totally doubling up on the length of mute in contact with each string. Sounds like a good thing to try when you're having problems getting enough damping from just one strip. And double thanks, Paul, for your comments on using a narrow strip UNDER the hammers (upright) in the treble. I didn't know how people did some parts of the treble, there's no room to get anything in above the hammers. So I was using rubber mutes below the hammers, not realizing it was practical to try to insert a temperament strip from that angle, but with your encouragement, I will try that now. And finally, thank you James, for your suggestion about the keybed backrail cloth. I haven't looked around for where to get it yet, but I definitely want to try it from what you say about it -- 'It mutes much better, inserts better and last 20 times as long.' Anybody else have similar experiences using backrail cloth for muting? Regardless, I want to try it. If it only ocassionally does one of the first two things, it sounds good to have around as an option, at the minimum. Do you strictly recommend backrail cloth, or what do you think of 'action cloth' or 'spring-rail' cloth like Paul and David suggested? I might write you again to ask more if I have any trouble deciding where to get it or am unsure how to specify it. Thanks to everyone again, Best regards, Trent Lesher > > > _______________________________________________ > pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives > > > > > ****** IMPORTANT NOTICE ****** > This e-mail, and any attachments hereto, is intended only for use by the > addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or > confidential information. 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