Front rail punchings...off topic

[Brian Trout]

I've seen people use punchings of various sizes and shapes on the tuning
pins for purposes of marking the A's or the C's for chipping.  I use a
little piece of masking tape on the very top of the pin.  It's whatever
floats your boat, whatever works for you.

As for the actual chipping, I rarely use any "device" other than my ear and
the radio (and of course the tuning hammer and a chip or pick).  Yes, I said
the radio.  I'll turn it on to a fairly slow style of music and let my ear
and my imagination do the rest.  There's no need for perfection.  So long as
I know what note I'm trying to tune, and I can hear from the radio where the
basic pitches of the scale are, it's very easy.  Although I do not have
"perfect pitch", I would say I have "relative pitch", which is certainly
good enough to tell what note of the scale I'm on.  The radio merely gives a
constant feedback of how well I'm doing with the pitch, which is faster for
me than "thinking about it" long enough to come up with that 'pitch'.  It's
just what works for me.

FWIW.

Brian Trout
Quarryville, PA
btrout@desupernet.net