Pitch-paying,(was Pounding pins)

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Brian writes: 
<< > Every time I think I've figured out just how bad a piano 'untouched by a

> tuning for a decade' will be, it'll surprise me.

>>

> Sometimes things actually go better than expected.   :-)

>  I hope yours does too, Ed.

>  Have a good day.

Greetings,  
    I have had a pretty good day, yes.  I have just come back from that Kawai 
KG2-D(untuned in the four years since purchase, new).  I found that the bass 
and mid section were 25 and 27 cents, repectively, flat.  Above C5, things 
began to deteriorate, finally reaching 70 cents flat in the last octave.   
   I moved a few strings in the top section while listening, then gave the 
whole area a silent pull up,(approx 3 minutes).  Then found the octave below 
had dropped another 10 cents, so I gave a silent raise to one string in each 
unison for that section, spending another 60 seconds to throw this piano into 
something of a balance my machine could compensate with.  The low tenor 
didn't move much in response to this, so I began the pitch raise with the SAT 
 calculator giving me a 25% overpull,  at the break,  and remeasuring every 
octave. I was pulling things up to near A-442 right from the start.
        I use the una corda to tune the middle string first, then release it 
to tune the left side string,  move the mute to the next space between notes 
and tune the right side string of the unison.  I do it this way to halve the 
number of times I pick up the mute, to have an eaiser target to hit with the 
mute when I do move it, and to give my feet something to do while I tune.  If 
I miss a target on the machine, I don't correct it, I just  let the next 
string compensate.  I pull strings sharp enough so that releasing the hammer 
with a slight wiggle drops that string close enough to a reasonable tension.  
      For me, speed comes from giving the pin only one push flat after having 
pulled it sharp enough to blur the lights. (not counting a bump flat to break 
any corrosion).  This single stoke downward to pitch also bypasses the 
majority of sticky pin problems.  I do the bass last, from the break down.  
Total pitch raise time so far is about 20 minutes and I have it at 440 +- 
2cents.  I could never get it near this close, this fast, by ear.  Thank you 
Sanderson, Scott and Reyburn, machina magica, indeed! 
    I took a break to clean the pencils out of the action, and tighten the 
pedal brackets. Another 10 minutes brings the total up to 1/2 hour and I am 
ready to tune. ( I will seat and level strings in December, when this wire 
has finished moving so much)
    I tuned it from A1 to C88, using the pitch correction calcultor to 
accomodate those last 2 cent deviant sections. It took an hour, so total tech 
time was 90 minutes.  
Including travel time, it was a 2 hour billing at $75 per hour.  They were 
stunned at how nice the piano sounded and scheduled a December tuning.  
    What they were also stunned by was only paying $150 to play catch-up for 
the 12 missed tunings over the pianos first four years. They thought it would 
be a lot more!  
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT