At 07:08 PM 11/7/98 -0600, you wrote: >At last, something technical. This is interesting. I've often wondered what >I was actually getting away with in tuning unisons. How far into the tone >did you tune? Were you giving it a second for the attack to coalesce, or >hitting the key quickly and continuously as you tuned? I tuned the note with an impact technic using a *swinger* style hammer. The blow necessary to get stability was about mf (oh for a sound pressure meter). The note was beat free to my ears for about 12 seconds (which is all the jam the piano had to offer). I chose the note because each of the wires seemed *clean* to my ear--there were no little *extras* as there are in so many pianos. The measurements were taken by setting RCT into listening mode and then striking the note at a p or at most mp level, so they would have the impact distortion as part of the measurement. I did a similar test last January where I chose a different note (on the same piano as it happens) and measured immediately, then at 1 second, and etc. Have a look in the archives. I keep hoping someone else will try to duplicate the these experiments--but so far only Gentelman Jim has ever bothered. After all the measurements the note was still beat free to my ears. >I'm thinking that >after the first half second or so of the attack, the note gets cleaner as >everything pulls together. I have found that attack distortion lessens as >the unison is better tuned, so I get better unison tuning in the attack, >than I do in the decay. Did you try it the other way and tune each >individual string as perfectly as possible with the RCT, muting the others, >and measure the pitch of the resulting unison? no > >I'm also curious as to what factors determine how much tuning divergence >will pull together to an 'acceptable' level. String termination and the >impedance of the bridge/soundboard assembly would surely affect this, as >would the frequency, I would think. I am sure they do affect it--but I am not sure how or which way. >You probably have a tentative hypothesis >about what you've got so far, so what do you think? Tentatively I think I probably listen to the higher partials when I set unisons. It would be great to dig out my old accutuner and *force* a unison using the filter output and headphones to *fool* my ears and then measure the results. That is the reason I presented the raw data to the list. I hope to do the same test on a rather old Steinway D (last restrung in 1976). Regards, Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.M.T., R.P.T. "Tuner for the Centre of the Arts" drose@dlcwest.com http://www.dlcwest.com/~drose/ 3004 Grant Rd. REGINA, SK S4S 5G7 306-352-3620 or 1-888-29t-uner
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