stability of pitch raises (Ron's question)

[Kent Swafford]

On 9/2/01 1:33 PM, "Ron Nossaman" <RNossaman@KSCABLE.com> wrote:

> How can one compute charges on something they can't define?

Last I heard, tuning fees are arbitrary, and don't necessarily reflect the
actual work needed to get a specific piano in tune; why shouldn't pitch
raise charges be arbitrary as well?

I don't always charge for a pitch adjustment (guess that means I'm not
invited to comment here), but I am not offended by the practice of other
techs who charge for pitch raises in order to "punish" the customer because
it's been too long since the last tuning.

I have a rather involved method for using CyberTuner to determine the
overall pitch level of a piano, but I am not offended by the practice of
other techs who simply measure A4 and compute charges based on the starting
pitch of A4. Computing pitch correction charges based on the starting pitch
of A4 is a simple and consistent method for quoting a price and getting
customer $ approval before starting the work.

Determining "how far off pitch the piano is" is a rather different problem
from that of computing pitch raise charges. Pitch raise mode in RCT has a
neat feature in that it can automatically measure and store the starting
pitch of each note. I use this feature for a few seconds on every piano I
tune to determine the piano's beginning overall pitch by measuring all the
As and all the Cs of the piano. Of course, often pianos are so uneven
between sections that they will require a pitch correction pass before they
can be tuned to _any_ pitch level. Most often though, the range of pitches
of the As and Cs will be small enough that the general pitch level of the
piano can be determined to within reasonable tolerances.

I am tempted to try to answer a question you posed quite some time ago as to
why the top octave of a piano needs overpull when doing a pitch correction.
The short answer is because when the research was done to develop the smarts
to program into the EDTs, the measurements said the top notes did indeed
drop and so overpull was needed. Keep in mind that the original instructions
for using the SAT and RCT pitch correction modes involved chromatically
tuning A0-C8 pulling in unisons as you go, _and_ the instructions
specifically said not to set the string, to simply pull the string up to
where the display stops, then let go. Letting go of the hammer without
setting the string was a technique for speed that resulted in more drop;
and even more drop would occur as the other two strings of the unison were
pulled in aurally to match the first string, since a good portion of the
drop in a single string appears to come from pulling up the strings in the
immediate vicinity of that first string. All that said, the behavior of the
top half octave during a pitch raise is less predictable than other parts of
the piano; some pianos need little overpull in the top half octave.

Kent Swafford