SPOOKY piano

[Jim Coleman, Sr.]

HI Bill:

I suppose you have considered that many people in our area use piggyback
cooling systems. When it is humid outside, they use the swamp type cooler.
When it is dry, they use the airconditioner. If the piano is in direct
line with the cooling ducts, this condition can happen.

Jim Coleman, Sr.

Hey, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't really out to 
get me.


On Thu, 24 Sep 1998 BSimon1234@AOL.COM 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!
>