Pitch Raise Sequence

[Joe & Penny Goss]

Terry,
Perhaps the last tech tuned the piano to rinky-tink to get that special
sound.
Or most likely the owners purchased a tuning pack from the local music store
and dad or mom tuned the piano themselves.
The worst piano that has been my task to tune was an old nondiscript upright
moved to our area a few years ago from the mid west. It had been in a
Catholic church.
every white  key was a half step low and every sharp a whole step low. The
sharps as I recall were worse in tune than the naturals. I set the SAT lll
to 45 sharp in the plain strings and 25 in the bass.
came out great on one pass so that it could be tuned.
Why it would vary that way is only a guess but it seemed as though someone
only played in the key of C major.
Joe Goss


> Excellent automobile analogy Brian! I often use automobile analogies in
> explaining piano concepts to clients. I had never thought of this one
> though. This one will help me lots (at least half my tunings at this stage
> of the game include pitch raises - sometimes big ones).
>
> I asked the lady the other day when was the last time her beautiful wurly
> spinet had been tuned. She said she was not sure because it had just been
> given to her, but she was sure it was fairly recent because the little
girl
> had been practicing on it for years while taking lessons. I said "It may
not
> be too bad then" and proceeded to check pitch. The darn thing was THE most
> out-of-tune piano I have ever heard. Unisons varied by a half step. Notes
> varied from a little less than a half-step flat to over 300 cents flat! My
> heart wept for the little girl taking lessons :-(. I won't look for her at
> Carnage Hall (of course, she obviously had alot of determination.......).
>
> Terry Farrell
> Piano Tuning & Service
> Tampa, Florida
> mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brian Trout" <btrout@desupernet.net>
> To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 10:36 AM
> Subject: Re: Pitch Raise Sequence
>
>
> snip>
> > We as tuner types tend to get kind of 'up tight' about A440, at pitch
> > pianos that started a LONG way from there.  Even with the best of
efforts,
> a
> > full step pitch raise won't be as stable as a piano that's been tuned at
> > A440 every 3 months for the last 10 years.  Our best efforts are
certainly
> > an improvement, but an example I sometimes use (mostly for people who
work
> > on their cars) is this.  If you have your oil changed every 2000 miles,
> and
> > you pull the dipstick a few miles after an oil change, it'll probably be
> > very clean.  If you drive your car for 60,000 miles and never change
your
> > oil, then change it once and after just a very few miles, pull the
> dipstick,
> > even your new oil will not be nearly as clean as the oil in the other
guys
> > car that changed his faithfully every 2000 miles, in fact it'll probably
> be
> > pretty dirty.  Just like in changing the oil, a tuning now is certainly
in
> > order, and will indeed help.  But today's tuning won't undo 10 years of
> > neglect in a two hour service call.  We'll go from here with a plan for
> > regular service, and over the next several tunings, the piano will
become
> > more stable and more likely to stay closer to pitch.
> >
> > Brian Trout
> > Quarryville, PA
> > btrout@desupernet.net
> >
>
>
>