Test Blows...Clarification

[Terry Neely]

When the owner comes out, you can always make a joke like" I wrote that myself". Good for a laugh and the owner somehow feels reeassured that you are not having a temper tantrum.
                                        Terry Neely

Mike and Jane Spalding wrote:

> Hi Corey,
>
> I'm also working at improving my tuning stability, and worried that my test blows are not doing enough to settle the string.  The current routine is to tune with relatively hard blows, watch ETD/listen with soft blows, when it sounds good, hit a couple hard test blows then watch/listen softly one last time.  At the end of the tuning pass,  I hold the damper pedal down and pound octaves up and down the keyboard with both hands (I read about this somewhere, I think it was attributed to Norm Neblett).  The idea is to get as much energy into the bridge as you can, to shake out any unequal tension accross the bridge.  (It also brings the piano owner back out to see what you're doing.)  Seems to work - there's always a handful of strings (usually just unisons) to correct.  My goal is to learn to tune so that the octave pounding doesn't change the tuning.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Mike Spalding
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <SimsPiano@AOL.COM>
> To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:39 PM
> Subject: Test Blows...Clarification
>
> > Hi all,
> > I should make my technique clearer.  This is just something I'm trying out
> > and may not stick to.  I'm doing this partly, because most of the test blows
> > I do, don't knock the string out of tune....so here's my procedure.
> >
> > 1. tune piano with no test blows.
> > 2. put earplugs in, take both hands and hit keys in pairs (saves even more
> > time) about 5 times each as a test blow.
> > 3.  check bass notes.
> > 4.  listen to unisons and fix any noisemakers.
> >
> > I'm also thinking that the chances of a test blow knocking all 3 strings of a
> > trichord out equally are really slim, so I'm just listening for bad unisons,
> > mostly.
> >
> > OK....now......FIRE AT WILL ;)...and thanks again for all the previous
> > replies,
> > Corey
> >