SPOOKY piano

[Susan Kline]

I'm sure you investigated the obvious: a swamp cooler?

Susan

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At 03:00 AM 9/24/98 EDT, you wrote:
>This may or not be related to humidity, I never did find out.
>
>A couple of years ago, I went to a home and pitch raised their console 25
>cents, to A440,  broke a bass string and came back within a few weeks and
>found it 35-40 cents high. Lowered everything quickly, tuned to A440,
>installed string. Came back in a week to touch up the string and the entire
>piano was very low in pitch, perhaps 20-25 cts.  I started checking my SOT
>against the telephone dial tone at the beginning of each tuning, thinking I
>was tuning to a bad standard, but I was not. ( in our area there is a square
>wave 440 cycle tone for the dial tone) Of course, since I had tuned it
>recently, all these extra tunings were free, and why wouldn't they be?
>
>Every time I saw this piano, it was really off in who knows what direction, I
>finally passed on it, just gave up and would not go back. Perhaps someone was
>learning tuning, or some structural thing was going on, but I could not think
>of, or find, anything structural that would cause the piano to go sharp
>sometimes, flat other times, back and forth. I meant to bridge a few tuning
>pin tops with a glued hair, James Bond detective agency stuff,  but forgot
>until after I left.
>
>It was certainly a "failure" for me, but it was darn spooky, and I never did
>figure out a solution. It is the only piano I have ever worked on that did
not
>react as it was supposed to.
>
>I would like to hear ANY ideas of what might have happened.
>
>Thanks 
>Bill Simon
>
>P.S. - Incidentally, I have on one or two occasions, with the piano of a
>musician, left a trap of a hair glued across the tuning pins of the A3,
A4, A5
>and found them to be gone when I returned again to tune the next time. They
>might have been disturbed in cleaning, so now if I am curious about an
amateur
>tuning the piano, I leave a small drop of white glue on two or three pins,
and
>the tuning hammer leaves a mark or knocks them off. 
>
>Hey, - piano tuning can be  dull. One has to do something to liven it up!
>
>

Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com