Frozen Pianos (was Re: S&S B #496639)

Horace Greeley hgreeley@leland.Stanford.EDU
Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:24:29 -0700


Tim,

I think you've got the answer, to several threads discussed recently herein:

It's the rate of change as much as the change itself, yes?

Other comments?

>Also sprach Horace Greeley :

Well, thanks, but even Zarathustra "saw the light" at the end, and I have a
much more clear picture of my limitations...

Best.

Horace



>>
>> Dear Guy,
>>
>> Just how frozen is frozen?
>> I can't speak on the subject of frozen Steinways, but I have seen several
>old uprights that have been frozen solid (at least 0 F. /-20 C.) annually
>for years.  These are instruments that people keep at their summer
>cottages, and they seem to stay in tune from one year to the next at
>least as well as those in "normal" Great Lakes region houses.  They do
>not seem to suffer many of the common problems associated with being kept
>in buildings which are heated in the winter.  I can't say for certain
>that the finish isn't damaged, because I don't know their history,  but I
>see no good reason why it should be, unless it has a high water content
>to start with.  I recently had occasion to try out a piano at -10 C which
>I had tuned at a coolish room temperature a few months before, and aside
>from being a couple of beats sharp, it was in pretty good tune--much
>better than it would have been with a 30% change in R.H., anyway.  I
>would suspect that the rate of cooling would be more of an issue than the
>temperature per se in terms of the likelihood of damage.
>
>Tim Keenan
>Noteworthy Piano Service
>Kitchener, ON.




Horace Greeley			hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu

	"The defining statistic of death is that it has a one to one ratio."

		- George Bernard Shaw

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