Whether the piano can remain stable after a pitch raise and whether you trust your own ability to stabilize all string segments reliable are different things. In a concert situation I would always err on the side of caution and follow up to be sure that the piano remained stable because the situation is more critical. I’ve had that experience and there have been many times where the piano remained perfectly stable. Others where I lost a unison or two but that is a factor of segment stabilizing otherwise I would expect a more universal drift rather than the loss off a couple of unisons. I consider that type of stability issue something which I missed rather than something that is necessarily inherent in the process. No doubt it is a tougher task over the course of some 250+ strings to be sure that everything is equalized, but the fact that 99% of the piano remained stable suggests that the propensity for lack of stability is not a given but a matter of careful technique. How long the piano will remain stable is difficult to determine because you can’t generally tease out the variables that otherwise cause the piano to go out of tune anyway (changes in environment). However, short of string segment equalization problems (and given a stable environment) I see no reason that the piano won’t stay in tune for any shorter a period of time than one not requiring a pitch correction—I guess that’s become the mode of comparison. The bottom line is that the more you go over the piano the more likely you are to catch and correct any stubborn segments. The tendency for the segments to be stubborn will be influenced by the piano’s design, counterbearing angles, string condition, etc.. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 8:08 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] PR follow up I'm aware of the logical regression of this argument, but thought that perhaps there was a more facile way to distinguish between fine and adequate after radical pitch adjustment in order to not mislead ourselves. I guess part of my question back to you is "how long" will the piano remain stable after a radical pitch alteration then "tuning" of some sort. On the concert stage, or Johnny's home piano, the adequate/fine distinction becomes clearer, don't you think? P In a message dated 8/28/2009 10:04:33 P.M. Central Daylight Time, davidlovepianos at comcast.net writes: Tuning is always a moving target but that doesn’t mean that we can’t reasonably define “fine” tuning as one in which the piano stays where we put it assuming adequate skill and a stable environment. Otherwise, the discussion becomes somewhat meaningless. _____ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090828/576fbbbc/attachment-0001.htm>
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