I tried to send the following privately, but it bounced.
This is a scan of the SAT III promotional material distributed in Orlando.
You might have to view this with a mono-spaced font to make sense of it.
Kent Swafford
THEOFONE@aol.com wrote:
>I hav'nteven heard of it [SAT III].I use SAT Can anyone describe the features
price
>ect. I would appreciate that very much .
> Theodore Mamel RPT
> Pittsburgh Pa
The Real Cost of an Accu-Tuner
A customer of Inventronics was recently discussing with us
how satisfied she was with the value of the Accu-Tuners
that she has owned, which pleased us because she has a
reputation as being very frugal. In our conversation she
mentioned something about squeezing a nickel till something
about the buffalo... We decided to convey the pertinent
parts of our conversation to demonstrate the low cost of
owning an AccuTuner.
Our technician purchased the SAT S/N 14 in December 1982
for $950, owned the unit for 5 years 9 month and spent $110
in that period for repairs and upgrades. When it was time
for another repair, with a tuning schedule of 1,400 pianos
to tune a year, she decided to trade in S/N 14 rather than
go without an AccuTuner while it was being repaired. The
cost per month was for S/N 14 was $10.97. The replacement
Accu-Tuner S/N 969 was purchased September 16, 1988 and
never needed repairs, until it was traded in last month
(6/17/97). Sanderson Accu-Tuner S/N 969 went 8 years 9
months without ever breaking and the cost for S/N 969 was
$7.50 per month!
If our technician has the same success with her new S/N
3077 as she had with S/N 969 it will cost her $7.54 per
month to own her third Accu-Tuner. If our customer had kept
her first Accu -Tuner, the cost per month would have been
much lower. The depreciation of an Accu-Tuner is less than
a Mercedes.
Benefits of the Sanderson Accu-Tuner IIITM
We have been listening over the years to the features that
you would like us to incorporate, but until now there has
not been a drarnatic enough leap in technologies to jump
from our present product to the Sanderson Accu -Tuner III.
We are taking advantage of several new technologies to
increase battery life, increase the accuracy, increase the
ability of the filter circuit to reject noise by a factor
of four, inrease the reliability and in essence to increase
the value for you.
Longer Battery Life: We are now offering a
nickel-metal-hydride battery in the Sanderson Accu-Tuner
III. The new battery will offer an even longer battery
charge than the Accu-Tuner II. We know from the SAT II that
a battery charge is lasting 50 to 60 hours. The SAT III
battery has more capacity than the SAT II battery, and we
are being conservative in our claims for the new battery
run time. As we are able to trim the consumption of some
remaining power hungry circuits , we feel confident that we
will be able to deliver more than 70 to 80 hours of use
between charging.
Adjustable Double Octaves: With the Accu-Tuner III you will
be able to adjust the width of your octaves on the fly. If
you are tuning the treble and the octaves sound a little
narrow, you can use the "SHIFT" and "D.O. Beat" button to
widen the double octave calculation and add more stretch.
If there is still not enough stretch as you are finishing
up the treble, you can increase the D.O. stretch number
again and quickly tie the new stretching into the last
octave. The D.O. Beat button works in the bass as well.
Note Stepping: Now you can tune the piano without having to
advance the Accu -tuner with the foot or thumb switch. The
new filter circuit has four sections to it, we designed one
section with a peak at 100 cents flat, and another section
to peak at 100 cents sharp. By designing the filter circuit
to listen for pitches one note up/down, we can essentially
listen for the notes on either side of the note you are
tuning and automatically advance in the appropriate
direction. By precisely defining the pitch that we are
looking for to change notes we can eliminate unexpected
changes in the note that Accu-Tuner is set to. No more
cords to roll and unroll.
Tuning Sequence: Now for the technicians that have been
bugging us for years, you can program in your own aural
sequence to keep in practice, and to check the tuning as
you proceed. (Yes Randy, we heard you years ago)
FAC Numbers: Originally we did not think that there would
be such a desire to review the FAC numbers after the SAT
had been turned off. We were wrong, and we have corrected
the problem. You will be able to review the three stretch
numbers from the SAT now. Once you have pulled up a page in
memory, if you press the STRETCH button alone you will be
able to toggle through the three stretch numbers of that
page in memory.
Non-Equal Temperaments: Now you can add any of 15 of your
own temperaments to any page in memory. All you have to do
is enter the corrections for one octave on a 12 note
temperament page, pull up a regular page of memory, and the
selected temperament will automatically add to the page of
memory as you tune.
4 1/2 Digit Display: The extra digit in the display has
allowed us to indicate whether the new features are
activated or not. Before this break to a totally new
Accu-Tuner we were limited with what we could offer without
confusing the users as to what was going on.
While redesigning, Inventronics was able to take advantage
of some of the latest technology. There is a company in
California that has developed a revolutionary style of
memory. While we are using the SAT it acts like
conventional Random Access Memory (RAM), but when the SAT
is turned off it loads all of the information into Read
Only Memory (ROM). Why are we telling you this? It means
that we no longer need a battery to back up RAM, which will
provide both of us with a more reliable product. No loss of
tunings in memory, no chance of losing your valuable
library of aural tunings. More for you to celebrate.....
Inventronics is always looking for ways to improve the
Accu-Tuners. We are at a point in the development of the
SAT III that if you have an idea that you wish we could
incorporate into the design, please let us know. We will
have a clipboard to collect your requests to be able to
consider them when we get back to Massachusetts.
For our present Accu-Tuner customers we will not be able to
upgrade Accu-Tuners I + II, but if you purchased an
Accu-Tuner within the last six months we are working on an
equitable arrangement to transition up to an Accu-Tuner
III. Please let us know if you would like to trade up to an
SAT III.
Thumb Switches
We have thumb switches ready for delivery. Inventronics has
been testing three different designs looking for the most
durable thumb switch. If you are one of the many that have
been waiting patiently, we are ready to deliver.
IBM Software
We are vorking to fill a void in communicating with an Accu
-Tuner II and now the Accu -Tuner III: Inexpensive IBM
software. We are writing a program that will communicate
through the common MIDI interfaces, and allow the freedom
of downloading your tunings and being able to save them to
disk. This will be available this fall, the software is
eighty percent complete, and we are working with a
consultant to finish testing communicating through various
MIDI interfaces. We are starting out with the serial port
MIDI interface and will branch out to interface with other
MIDI interfaces as soon as we finish with the first
interface.
Announcing the Sanderson Accu-Tuner ~ TM
Smaller, Lighter, but more Powerful
Now Taking Orders *
Feature Sanderson Accu-Tuner II Sanderson
Accu-Tuner III
Accuracy +/- 0.02 cents +/- 0.005 cents
Resolution +/- 0.05 cents +/- 0.05 cents
Repeatability +/- 0.05 cents +/- 0.05 cents
Play the Note
Above,
Note Stepping Footswitch,Keyboard Automatically
Steps Up,
Play the Note
Below,
Automatically
Steps Down
~0.5 Beats per
second,
Octave Width ~0.5 Beats per second or User-Adjust
Double-Octave
Width
Tuning Sequence
Chromatic Chromatic or
User-Entered Sequence
FAC Numbers Retrievable until SAT Retrievable with
the
is turned off Memory Page
Battery Life NiCad 50-60 hours NiMh 70-80 hours
Per Charge
Battery Life, Cost
4 to 6 years, $30.00 4 to 6 years,
$45.00
Battery Charge Status
None % of Charge Left
Non-Equal Custom Store in Memory 15 User Pages,
select to
Temperaments combine with any
Memory
Page
Weight 1.5 lbs 1.0 lb
Dimensions 7.5" x 5.5 x 3.75" 6" x 4.5" x 3"
4 1/2 Digits with
LCD Display 3 1/2 Digits step-up,
step-down, and
Temperament
Indicators
PTG Exam Program
Yes, Special Order Standard
Memory Capacity
60 Pages Standard, 206 max 200 Pages
Standard
Filter Specifications
One Section Active Filter Four Section
Bandpass
Filter
Long Term Value
10 Year Depreciation only 30%, retains 70% of
its cost.
Long Term Durability
All Accu-Tuners are still repairable and still
usable
Ruggedness Rarely breaks when dropped,
regularly survives being dropped from a piano.
Repair Service 1 to 2 days in shop
Support Toll Free Support l-800-FAST-440 (800-327-8440)
9:00-5:00+ EST Monday thru Friday, excluding
holidays.
* Reserve your Sanderson Accu-Tuner III now with a deposit
of $400.00 and see if your favorite number is still
available. Serial Numbers start at 5001. Delivery in the
Fall of 1997. Email Inventronics at Inventrncs@aol.com or
our Web page at http://www.cris.com/~fast44O/.
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC