Wim, I hear you loud and clear. Someone on the CAUT list said that if the unisons were going out, it might be "hammer technique". Well, it might NOT be. In some pianos, the unisons will go wild if the humidity changes at all. In others, they won't. Some pianos I tune right now will stay in tune for three years. Others will do well to make it for three weeks. They all get the same hammer technique. The relateve humidity where you are goes through wild excursions, and unless the buildings have top-rate climate control, you can expect exactly what is happening to happen. Perhaps you can borrow a recording thermometer-hygrometer from one of the science labs and put it in one of the rooms where you have a problem. Its recorded chart will probably show what the problem is and leave no doubt. Fifty years ago I was tuning for an institution where the heating system was an aniquated central steam system - several buildings off one central plant - underground steam pipes all over the palce. The only cooling in warm weather was open windows. In cold weather, some of the rooms in the music building would be overheated and dry, while others would have steam leaks and R.H. at the high end of the scale, and condensate running down the windows. One instructor was raising h--- because his pianos would not stay in tune, and he blamed me. I explained to him what the problem was. But he said, "No, the room is NOT too hot. I open all the windows as soon as I get in here in the mornings". Explaining to him was a no-winner. This was about the time I moved to Oak Ridge and took a job at ORNL, and that took care of MY problem, and it became someone else's. That same institution has grown since them, and all those old systems have been replaced with modern ones. The new music building that was completed about 1980 had some very tight specs on climate control, and the problems I described above just don't exist any more. That "new" music building is a tuner's delight. Your faculty should be glad you are there to take care of the tunings when they are needed. Jim Ellis
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