One more tuning question...

[Andrew & Rebeca Anderson]

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Dear Julie,
I did a 60-100 cent pitch-raise on a Wurlitzer.  The RH was 80% at 65 
degrees F.  The estimated overpull ended up a little much for a studio 
upright and the mid section ended up in a curve up to 4 cents over ideal 
pitch across the middle of the scale (that's likely to be gone when the 
temperature is turned up for weekend services).  I left it there.  I called 
for another fine tuning in 2-3 months.  By then things will have dried up 
and the piano will be close to needing another pitch-raise anyway.  I also 
recommended a DC system.  This church bought its piano years ago and hadn't 
had it tuned since.  (Only instrumentalist they have is a violinist so 
matching pitch isn't a problem.)

I have been called back a couple weeks after a tuning because the piano was 
sharp.  I had recorded the RH at that time and checked it at this time, 10% 
more.  Had a good informative discussion and sold a DC and an emergency 
tuning.  Those woodwind guys are real particular about pitch.

I always tune to A440 but am quick to admit that it is going out of tune as 
soon as I let go of the hammer (slowly usually, climate steady, that 
is).  If the climate is controlled, it won't be going up.  If it isn't, it 
may.  That's life.  What is nice is coming back to the same piano again and 
again and finding it more stable and consistent as it gets used to being in 
"correct" tune.
When you measure RH at each tuning you can give some thought to floating a 
tuning, I haven't yet.  The thing of it is, humidity induced pitch changes 
don't happen smoothly across the board.  So you fix the stretch to match 
that A4=441.5.  It's going to be a "Picasso tuning" when the board dries 
out.  Pulling the high tension portions of the scale down is easy, but is 
it desirable?  Perhaps the likely usage and customer's budgetary 
considerations play a role in the decision-making.  I like being able to 
say that in a certain window in time the pitch was extremely close to the 
theoretical ideal.  Problem is pianos don't live in a theoretical 
world.  One rainy week later that tuning can be quite a bit sharp and a 
three month long dry-spell can do horrendous things to your ideal tuning.

Perhaps a few of the floating pitch gurus could chime in on what works and 
what really does happen when it "works".

Andrew
At 09:36 AM 2/18/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>             Is one way of doing business for some tuners to just tune the 
> piano "where it is"? In other words, they check the A and if its close 
> enough (or even if its not close to 440 ) just tune the piano so that it 
> is in tune with itself???
>
>            And even going further, If they have a regular client, such as 
> a church, to do the above mentioned thing, cleaning up unisons (so as to 
> do a "bang-up" tuning) and then, on every 4th tuning or so pull it back 
> up to A440 or alittle above, so they are set up to repeat the whole 
> process, thereby saving themselves some time on intermittent tunings, yet 
> leaving the customer believing that they are receiving an A440 tuning 
> each and every time...when they aren't receiving a true tuning (as far as 
> proper pitch goes) each and every time??
>
>             Not that I would do such a thing in my practice. I do not 
> condone it either. I think it is dishonest. My question is do some 
> tooners do this?? is it possible?
>
>
>Julia
>Reading, PA

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