Well it finally came in Fedex on Tuesday late afternoon. I got the Mercury I package which has the re-furbished Powerbook with 100 MHz, 12 meg Ram and 750 meg hard drive. Also the micro dock with floppy drive did not come. The Powerbook looks as brand new. I have found that when it comes to me and anything that tends to be complex it takes a while to get up to speed. In reading the instruction manual so much emphasis was placed on plugging in the little sentinel Eve the first time the program run that I assumed it would not run until this was done. My problem was that without the micro dock there was no place to plug in this nasty little plug. My son Joshua in the evening said why don't I try it anyway so we did. I found out that when Dean install the program he has already done this procedure for you and the program can be keyed to a soft Sentinel Eve so it runs without it from then on unless something crashes. It only needs this plug when first installed.. I have been using computers since the very early 80's starting with a TRS-80 Mod III. Through the years with that, Commodore 64, and on into the IBM comps 286, 386, and now Pentiums I have found that I still have a lot to learn when learning something new. Forget what they say when they say a Mac is easier than and PC. Not for me. It is still a new strange thing to master. I remember when I got my first SOT. It took me weeks to learn how to use it correctly. When I got it updated with the Bournes pots I found out it took a whole lot more care and time to use it to take advantage of the accuracy. When I first got my SAT, before FAC, I found here was something new to master and again weeks followed till I was comfortable with it. The came FAC and after I sent mine in for updating once again I had a learning time. Same thing now. I took it with me on Wednesday and could not get it going at all for the first 2 tunings. I did get it going on my 3rd, a KG-2. It was now memorizing what I did right to get it to go. Finally on Friday I learned how to measure initial pitch before tuning. My next project is to learn how to do offset pitch tunings. Yesterday I did a Gulbransen upright that was -100c. I tried first but gave up since I was under a time constraint and got my SAT out of the truck and went at it . This weekend I WILL learn how to offset pitch. So far I have found that the machine seems to like harder, louder blows of the keys than I have been used to so I wore my shop ear protectors but that is like overkill so I will find some earmuffs this weekend. I have caught a bad cold this week so maybe that is what is making my ears hurt. I have been placing the MAC on a chair to the left side of the keyboard on verticals and inside on grand pianos. It also seems like everyone wants to watch especially when you are learning how to use the thing which puts a great deal more pressure on you. For those of you who haven't seen the RCT demonstrated the spinner has a different color for each of the 3 functions, fine tune, pitch raise, and measuring pitch. This is helpful to keep letting you know where you are in the program. When establishing the measurements for the tuning it prompts you what to do and if it is not satisfied with your results, too much variance, it makes you do it again. That means you better have quiet during this measuring stage. I have not struggled with the memory section yet, included is 196 already measured tunings that can be used. I think I better learn how to use the machine first. Since the only program on my machine is the RCT suite it is really a dedicated tuner and given that, the hard drive storage is like overkill. So far the worst piano I have tuned was a Lowrey spinet yesterday. The tuning came out well. I have found that with different tuners you get various versions of" in tune". I used to get 1 result aurally, another result when my SOT came, and still another when FAC in the SAT came along. So far I have found that the progression of 10ths going into the bass are really good. I think taking samples of 5 notes across the keyboard and at least 3 partials from each of those is responsible for this. The Lowrey tuning came out well and the overall sound I would describe as brutally honest and my description as raw. The best piano so far was the KG-2 and it came out wonderful. I have been using the default settings on octave stretch, there are 10 choices, and the easy, as compared to advanced setting on the opening screen. As with my progression from aural, 18 years, and following on throughout the SOT's and SAT's each tuner has been capable of finer work as I learned how to use it correctly. Like any tool, it means you have to learn how to use it correctly to get maximum results. When I got this thing I tried to contact Dean for several days unsuccessfully. I knew he was out of town last weekend but just found out Thursday night that it would be till next Monday so I was really sweating with no one to ask my questions to. I got a call from Deans wife who graciously told me what was going on and since then several e-mails and 1 call from Dean from the Carolinas letting me know he had just shipped the dock and drive and I could get more answers next week. I was very impressed by his wife taking the time to call me. Good for her. I will try to have next weeks impressions as I continue on my learning path. James Grebe R.P.T. from St. Louis pianoman@inlink.com "Take me through the darkness to the break of the day"
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