I was called out to check a tuning I did about a month ago, which a pianist, visiting, said was very badly out of tune. I have tuned this piano three times (4-now) all of them aurally because I couldn't get TLab to make a tuning curve that even came close to the "little red boxes" (help me, Dave Porritt). Even substituting notes for each other, the inharmonicity readings were splayed all over the place. I suggested a new, very expensive set of bass strings might help, but there were problems all over the piano. The gentleman watched me set up the TuneLab, saw there results, and, as an engineering PhD, said he was familiar with overtones, partials, etc., and when compared with the curve of a Yamaha G3, he was satisfied that the tuning on his piano would probably not match the much more competitor's piano. His reason for calling me was that a lady visited them one day, and played "a few notes" and said it was badly out of tune. Talking with this lady it was obvious she had no tuning background, and her "perfect pitch" was, as we all know, likely good "relative pitch", but certainly not perfect. My expressed opinion was that this was a lesser expensive model of piano, and there are reasons that some pianos that size cost upwards of $30,000. His piano had certain challenges which could be minimized, but not entirely eliminated, except with a complete restringing, and I am not at all sure that would fix it. He agreed, and, after I showed him the temperament, smooth fourths and fifths, clear progression of thirds, etc., which he said he heard, went through the entire piano in about 30 minutes, after pulling the action two or three times to fix little things along the way. When I tested notes using a tuning of a Yamaha G1, using TLPro, the tuning was very close to that curve. I also showed Mr. Yli what I called "extraneous noise" in the very top, as indicated by multiple "spikes" in the graph, and he then said he has done harmonic measurements in buildings, and understood the concept. He was very gracious, and appreciatve of my willingness to re-examine my tuning, and I was rewarded to check it over and find only a few things that bothered me, a month after the tuning. This is a 1985 Sherman Clay SGD-2. Any comments? If willing to do so, please "cc" to Yli@dodi.com. Thanks Les Bartlett Houston ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
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