Seating/false beats

[BobDavis88@aol.com]

> I seem to be, in yet again another way, a dinosaur here.  I tune _very_
>  hard.

Dear Greelosaurus Rex,

I'm with you on how pleasant it is for a tuner to sit in the audience and
hear nothing but music. No SPAANNNG or tick-tick or wah-wah-wah. I don't
think many people would argue against hard  _test_  blows, but I think the
discussion has been about hard blows to do the actual tuning. My goal is to
have good enough lever technique to be able to tune with light blows, then
have the [very hard] test blow do nothing whatsoever. Obviously it doesn't
always work, but most of the time; often enough that it saves major wear on
the ears and fingers, and I suppose a little on the piano as well.

As has been previously mentioned, there is on some pianos the phenomenon of a
test blow hard enough to pull enough string temporarily through the bearing
points that the string goes sharp over the next minute or two, so there's the
tradeoff (my favorite word concerning pianos) between hard enough to make
sure the pianist can't do any permanent damage to the unison, and not so hard
as to get a "false positive." Once again the word "judgment" rears its ugly
head.

As far as seating strings goes, all this talk about tapping makes me wonder:
supposing the string does ride up the pin, how much pressure can it take to
get it to go back down? I would think that light pressure with a  unison-wide
stick would do the job. After all, with downbearing and all, the string
 _wants_  to go back down.

Bob Davis