Dear John, Don't you just hate Dear John letters? :-) Today I tuned one of the Steinway D's for a recital. I was lucky that the piano had only gone sharp up to A-443 over the summer (not tuned in about 3 months), considering that the humidity control is very poor in the small recital hall. In previous years, I have measured the pitch of this piano up to A-446 or A-447, due to extremely high humidity. It took 2-1/2 hours to wrestle with the piano to do a nice tuning at A-440 (A-440 was the request of the woodwind instructor), and another hour for adjusting dampers. In my small amount of experience, the piano can take a much higher pitch than A-440 because it is very well built. But... the piano will fight you as you bring the piano up to A-443, and then once you have struggled to do a nice tuning and gotten the piano solidly in tune, the piano will fight you again as you lower the piano back to A-440 after the concert. Make sure you get paid well for this. Sincerely, David A. Vanderhoofven, RPT Missouri Southern State College Joplin, Missouri P.S. I was driving to an out of town appointment on Wednesday morning, September 15, 1999, and heard a great piano on the radio. It was on Performance Today, on NPR, and the pianist in the studio played a Waltz and 2 Nocturnes by Chopin. Whoever tuned that piano did an excellent job and should be recognized for it. Beautiful! At 07:17 PM 09/13/1999 , you wrote: >The Vienna Chamber Orchestra is playing here next month and they have >asked that the piano be tuned to A443. No problem, although I would >rather not. But I was just wondering,... How high can we safely take the >pitch of a Steinway D? > >John Chapman, RPT
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