..stability issue..

[Richard Brekne]

Phil Bondi wrote:

> Good Morning.
>
> There are 2 Baldwin "R"'s in a restaurant that I have been trying to
> maintain as a customer..frankly, I am getting frustrated with the complaints
> that they won't stay in tune.
>
> I have:
>
> seated all strings.
> beat the heck out of all strings while tuning.
> added DC to both.
> tried to educate the player..some people just don't want to listen or hear
> what's being said..he is not a 'hard' player.
>
> ..still the same complaints..one piano is being played 6 nights a week while
> the other is used sparingly..it is the complaint that Piano#1 goes out of
> tune within a week of me being there and Piano#2 lasts 2 weeks..now please
> understand that 'out of tune' means, to this person, that some unisons are
> starting to drift.
>
>

Seems like you have done basically what you can do. Assuming your hammer
technique works for these pianos, I dont really see what else you can do except
tune more often. DC will not help one iota unless the piano gets out of tune due
to climatic variations. This is often easy to identify as different sections of
the piano will have a tendency to change pitch in relationship to other
sections. DC is most effective when dealing with seasonal changes in humidity
levels, and is not going to be nearly so effective in dealing with wildly
varying conditions in the course of one day. We dont really talk much about that
particular situation as for the most part its not an issue. I am not really sure
how much is actually known about that when it comes down to it.

If your experience is that there was no significant change in the pianos
behaviour after installation of DC, and a few months have past since
installation, then the pianos instability problem was probably not climate
related, or you have such a wildly varying climate from day to day that nothing
available is going to help.

This can explain also why his G2 in another location held better, tho it does
not neccessarily explain it. Could be that the Baldwins construction is such
that they simply dont hold tuning as well. There are many pianos that are
"weather sick". Nordiska pianos are notorious for this ailment, tho in the home
with a DC installed they hold fine.

Take a few humidity readings, find out how much variation there is in the course
of a typical 24 hours and for how long humidity levels hold at each extreme.
That will tell you if you have a climate problem. More then likely, you will
simply have to tune them much more often to get them to stick.

I have  pubs in town. In one of them I simply have to tune the piano once every
other week, or by the third week it gets awful. This same grand (Yamaha C3) has
been in another location each year for a double piano show that goes on for a
month, and only has to be tuned once in the month there.

A piano is not just a piano, and a location is not just a location. Everything
relates.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway