Leslie W Bartlett wrote: > > > > > >Here is a question for you to ponder? When pitch raising do you fine > >tune the > >piano immediately after or come back after the piano has settled, say > >3-5 days > >or one month? Does it depend on how much you raise the pitch? > > > Thanks to those who responded to my question regarding pitch raising. I > think the above question is the one that concerns me more- discussion > regarding immediate "fine tuning" along with the pitch raise, or pitch > raise follwed by fune tunings days or weeks later. > Leslie, I use RCT to raise pitch according to the calculations of the pitch raise feature. I spend about 20 minutes doing this which results in a piano which is nearly in tune but not stable, since I don't spend time with test blows or pin wiggling. I immediately follow with a smooth tuning where I now concentrate on both fine tuning and stability. I end up with a tuning I'm fairly happy with, plus or minus depending on how far out of pitch the piano was to begin with. I often don't recommend an early return. If they were able to play on a very out of tune piano without experiencing excruciating pain, then they will probably be very happy with it after the tuning and I encourage them to call if they think it needs to be retuned sooner. Of course, on a piano that might break strings, I'm much more careful about overpulling the pitch, keeping it to A=440 on the first pass. I'll do a second going over, with overpull if I dare, before giving it the final smooth tuning, all on the same visit. In some cases, where the owner is a musician and they want the tuning to be optimum, I will recommend an early return because there will be _some_ drift after a pitch raise/fine tuning. I will almost never do a pitch raise only, and then schedule a return for fine tuning, because I want the piano to be in tune and stable as much as possible on the first visit. Also, I would need to charge more for the second trip and, although the customer would be getting a piano that might sound a little better (to my critical ears), I don't think I can justify the extra cost to someone with non-critical ears. None of this is hard and fast. "It depends", as someone said... on the piano and the customer. Tom -- Thomas A. Cole RPT Santa Cruz, CA
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