Now you've done it! I'll bet a little too much some ears... '-). But, IMHO, spot on... David Ilvedson Pacifica, CA On Apr 16, 2010, at 10:11 AM, "Jeff Tanner" <tannertuner at bellsouth.net> wrote: On April 12 at 10:23 PM, Susan Kline wrote: There is something awfully pleasant about being in touch with the instrument, without the distraction of any extraneous non-musical data. See, this is really the heart of the misconception. After I started using the ETD, I learned a lot more about the piano than I knew before. The ETD actually put me more in touch with the instrument. The diagnostic abilities the ETD brings to the table are far more revealing of the character of the piano than what we have at our disposal without it. Albert Picknell wrote: A generalization to which I am an exception (from David Ilvedson): "I tune unisons as I go and this is a challenge for aural tuners...why? Because they are not confident in >tuning from unisons." I tune aurally from unisons all the time. No problem. So do I. I've always tuned all treble unisons as I go, midrange and bass depends on the piano, either aurally or ETD. He may not have worded it the best way, but he's right. I think the benefit David probably meant to bring light to is that when you tune unisons as you go, everything changes behind you more rapidly than with single string tuning, so that as you aurally tune octaves going up, for example, your reference pitches are not where you left them, so you are carrying that error forward, multiplying its effect, unless you are a really good guesser. With the ETD, your reference is unchanging and unisons as you go is more reliable. Ron Overs wrote: Its amazing how some technicians, who use ETD, claim that their tunings will, by virtue of the machine, be superior to an aural tuning? Ironically, it gives me an indication of the aural tuning skills of any ETD-technician who makes such a claim. Ironically, the point you make goes both ways. Now before anyone gets offended, read closely - this is not an indictment of anyone commenting on this thread. I suspect everyone commenting here is quite well skilled. But a lot of aural tooners out there defend aural tuning as superior because they don't want to have their skills challenged. I heard just such an urban legend from a customer this week, "You know some people say that ear tuning is better because the machine makes it TOO perfect." You know that had to have been started by some tooner with an inferiority complex and that is what is used as a competitive claim to protect their reputation. Even after I started using my SAT, I thought for a long time, you know, I can tune aurally better than this thing -- it just makes my day less stressful. But as the years have gone on, I've studied what its doing vs what I would do aurally. It is most noticeable when you start trying to make aural corrections to force the imperfect piano scale to submit to our aural rules, only to realize that you're starting a mad cycle of making things worse. But more lately, I've begun realizing that my aural tuning sequence produces a tuning that might sound ok, but the machine gives me a little more confidence to be a risk taker with the overall tuning. You get results that you wouldn't have allowed yourself to produce aurally, and its usually pretty darn eye-opening. Certainly, its most noticeable when a poorly scaled spinet actually sounds like a piano afterward. But you then realize that every scale has imperfections, and if I'm setting the entire scale based on an imperfect middle section, then maybe my aural rules need to be reevaluated, even with concert pianos. Two days ago I had a 6 piano day 80 miles away. The 5 pm appointment had two of the pianos, and the lady wanted me to tune her 90 year old beater upright to her Yamaha M404 and make it sound good. Thank you Mr. Sanderson. Jeff Tanner
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