pitch raises & tuning pins

[Carl Root]

Hello Ron, John, Bill and others,

My position on broken tuning pins was that it only happens when pins are
very tight and that improper seating could increase the possibilty of
breaking one.  Newton suggested that poor quality pins, such as some
found in older Czech or Russian pianos, could be broken, even if the
torque was moderate.  I've only tuned a handful of these and didn't
break one, but I would point out that so far, no one has suggested that
you can break a good quality pin with moderate torque, even with
improper seating of the tip on the pin.

Yat Lam Hong, PTJ tech editor several years ago, wrote an article which
emphasized, among other things, focusing on the next pin that you're
going to tune.  Following his suggestion, I ground off the tip very
slightly so that the 'stars' would line up with the handle, reducing the
need to feel around for the right fit.  Line up the handle with a corner
of face of the pin and it goes right on.

For major pitch raises, I use no mutes.  I used to use my Accufork and
now use RCT - you need some sort of visual or aural target, as opposed
to just yanking everything up a half step, as someone once suggested. 
I've only done two or three major pitch raises with RCT, so there's lots
more for me to learn about applying my old method.  

You can go through a piano very quickly without mutes.  I doubt that the
next pass with mutes will give you a fine tuning, though, since the
center strings, or which ever you chose, will not necessarily reflect
the the overall tension level of the chipped piano.  Precise overshoots
that the RCT is capable of may not be much use here, so a quicker tuning
in fine mode without waiting for the machine to calculate the overshoot
each time, may be just as accurate.   

Carl Root, RPT
Rockville, MD