[CAUT] electronic tuning device preference?

[Andrew Anderson]

Bill,
This is a good point.  Your tunings do have to fit a piano's 
persona.  Steinways are rather lethargic without fairly wide 
intervals--stretch.  Do the same to a Bechstein or a Sauter and they 
are all teeth and claws.
This was recently driven home to me when I took a client to New York 
to attend a concert at the Weill Recital Hall at the Carnegie Center 
to hear a Sauter he was interested in buying.  The technician who did 
the job is probably used to tuning Steinways.  He, the tech., went on 
and on to the promoter about how he had developed the perfect way to 
divide of the temperament etc.  The piano did not sound 
good.  Unisons were fine but I would describe it as almost raspy and 
a well-tuned Sauter can be really sweet as well as powerful.  I was 
disappointed and the customer non-plussed.  He likes the ones I have 
here better.

If you are on autopilot "watching them blinking lights" you really 
aren't doing anyone a service.  I do use a Veritune VT100 but I don't 
use the standard tuning.  It is not a fine tuning.  I programmed my 
own preferences into the VT100 and can select from several depending 
on the sound I am getting from the piano.  I don't like doing 
calculus without a calculator and I don't like tuning without the 
VT100 but neither can be relied on to fit everything without wet-ware guidance.

YMMV,
Andrew Anderson

At 06:32 PM 3/12/2008, you wrote:
>Hi Keith and Fred,
>
>It has been interesting to read what both of you have said. I will 
>say this, I feel that one should not be tuning pianos without being 
>able to tune aurally proficiantly. I use an ETD but was trained to 
>tune aurally first. When I tune, the ETD is used along with the ear. 
>No matter how good the ETDs are, they still cannot tell what will be 
>a really great tuning. I was helping someone with their tuning and 
>he was making good progress until he got a SAT lll. From there on it 
>was look at only the machine and his tunings went downhill. No 
>matter what I told him, he kept insisting that his tuning was better 
>and yet people that he tuned for before did not want him to tune for 
>them anymore. There are times when I will go with aural only to make 
>sure that my ear is still good and not getting machine lazy. I still 
>think that the best tunings are the ones where a tech uses both the 
>ETD and aural tuning. The final judgment should always be with the ear.
>
>Bill Balmer,RPT
>University of Findlay and Ohio Northern University