The way they explained it to me at the Acadamy in Japan, was that pitch (according to them) was figured from a A3(2), and not A4(1). When they measured pitch for exams with their machines they measured at A3. The two instructors that demonstrated their personal technic to me compared F3-Fork=F3-A3. The reason it works I think is covered well by Roberts post. A high quality fork measured correctly will not have any partials until way up the ladder. I forget but there is one partial I think about half way inbetween the 6th and 7th true harmonic... or something like that. Other pianostring like partials that are picked up by devices like Tunelab are either because the fork is poorly made, or because of what Robert wrote about. At least thats the skinny from the producers of the best tuning forks available. As far as why one tuner chooses one method over another.... different strokes. A good tuner will get it right anyways. Cheers RicB ---------------- Having said that, suppose we accept that the fork does produce 880.0. If you use the Yamaha method, you are tuning A3 such that its 4th partial is 880.0. If you then tune A4 to that, how do you know when you have A4's fundamental at 440? If you tune a 2:1, A4 will be flat, because there is more than an octave between A3's 2nd and 4th partials. If you tune a 4:2, A4 will be even flatter, amount depending on inharmonicity. No? ---------------- My point is, you have a fork, supposedly producing exactly 440.0. Why not use it directly, as in F2-A4=F2-Fork, instead of interposing at least one (string inharmonic) or two (fork inharmonic) variables?
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