Hmm ... this is just an empirical observation, but I'd give the DC a little more credit. I put one in a 1903 Steinway A with some block looseness. That problem went away and now I can hardly keep this nice lady to an annual tuning schedule as it stays fairly even, if not exactly at pitch. In another case, I put one in a Chick 1/4 that was wildly unstable, though it lived almost by itself in a small bedroom with an old organ, a bookcase, and no other furniture, so there was little to disturb it's environment most of the time. It was sold to another of my customers and I installed a DC. It is now one of the most stable pianos I tune even though it lives in a central foyer area with four doorways and a staircase around it in a draft old farm house! BTW, neither application has an undercover. And, while I've got your ear (or, actually, while I've got your eye). I believe undercovers can boost effectiveness a lot but I hate them. I hate putting them in, I hate servicing systems that have them, and, most of all, I think they are absurdly, wildly, grossly, and ridiculously overpriced -- I can't, in good conscience put much of any markup on them. I mean, come on, a couple yards of speaker cloth, some Velcro strips, thumbtacks I never use. We had a discussion a couple years back about putting in our own materials at a much more reasonable cost to us and the customer. Some argued for it, others that it was violating patents, etc. I'm an honest person and have not done it, but when you take it down to basics, it's just a piece of material stapled to the bottom of a piano, for heaven's sake. I don't think the DC engineers spent a lot of time designing and inventing this "product". Alan Barnard Salem, MO Original message From: "Andrew and Rebeca Anderson" To: "Pianotech List" Received: 2/17/2008 5:43:27 PM Subject: Re: Whole room humidity control better than Dampp Chaser. ( Right?) A DC system really can't be effective in a grand without a string-cover. Even then it doesn't really help the front key-pins. An undercover is recommended if the place has forced air heating/conditioning. My wife's concert grand wouldn't stabilize until I made both additions above. Andew Anderson At 04:45 PM 2/17/2008, you wrote: Yes, I do think whole room units are better. DC units do not address pin blocks in grand pianos. I had a customer with a 5 year old Kawai RX series with a DC unit installed and had loose tuning pins. I read 15% humidity in his home. I instructed him to purchase a humidifier immediately. With 6 weeks at 40% humidity the tuning pin were back to normal tightness. I got it back in tune and now it stays in tune. I have found that DC units do a fairly good job in upright piano. Al Guecia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Prof. Euphonious Thump" <lclgcnp at yahoo.com> To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2008 5:21 PM Subject: Whole room humidity control better than Dampp Chaser. ( Right?) > Dear Everybody, > My friend with the Bechstein grand someone's > giving him wonders if a Kenmore dehumidifier and a > digital hygrometer on the wall would be better than a > Dampp chaser at protecting his "baby". > I'd certainly think so, but wanted to ask here, > as well. > Thanks! > Thump > > P.S. A he lives in an apartment, I imagine he has a > reasonably small room he can close off for it. > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20080217/c5b83bf2/attachment.html
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