..this bass is still out of tune..

[Tom Sivak]

I haven't read all your replies, but I have a similar story to share.  A friend of mine is a professional bass player, so the bass is of particular interest to him.  He called me two or three days after I tuned his Gulbransen console to tell me that the bass was out of tune.  I went the next day to check it.  
   
  He also played a tenth for me: C3 to E4, and said, "See?  You can hear it beating!"
   
  Funny he didn't pick apart the bichord unisons, which are only called unisons because there is no musical term to define what they actually sound like on that piano.
   
  Tom Sivak
  Chicago

Phil Bondi <phil at philbondi.com> wrote:
  Hi all. A funny story to share:

Baldwin L - in good condition with a recently 
retired doctor at the steering wheel. The piano 
was recently moved, and the doctor was concerned 
with the bass being in tune. I assured him the 
bass was no more out of tune than the rest of 
the piano, so I proceeded. As I was tuning, the 
doctor asked again about the bass and the 
possibility of having to 'replace the tuning 
pins' because they're not holding a 
tune'...sounds like he's been reading too much 
internet garbage lately..anyway, I assured him 
his torque was just fine..and I advised him that 
replacing anything regarding the pins was 
unnecessary.

I noticed the regulation needing some work, so 
we made another appointment to work on it. That 
appointment was today. The first words out of 
his mouth " the bass is out of tune. Please take 
care of it". Well, there was a slight wobble in 
D#2, so I fixed that..

After taking care of the regulation problems, I 
asked him to sit down and play. The first thing 
he does is play a 10th from C1 to E2 - he tells 
me "that doesn't sound good"..I agreed. There is 
such a thing as "low interval limits". I know I 
didn't fully convince him that such a phenomenon 
exists, but he agreed he's never seen music 
written down there with that 10th.

He did like the work that I did to the 
regulation - it just needed some TLC - blow 
distance, let-off, drop, etc. - re-surface the 
hammers - it played nice when I got done, but I 
can't do anything to a C1-E2 10th to make that 
sound good!

-Phil Bondi(Fl)


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