self tuning piano????

[Bill Ballard]

At 8:38 AM -0400 7/3/02, Jon Page wrote:
>If it is tuned in the factory, only a factory specialist will be 
>qualified to tune it once the tuning gets really of whack.
>Imagine the price tag that service will bring.

At 8:50 PM -0400 7/1/02, Bill Ballard wrote:
>That's when the regional airport limo brings in the Factory Re-Tuner 
>(accept no substitutes), to do a >manual tuning (again, locked upon 
>completion).

At 8:38 AM -0400 7/3/02, Jon Page wrote:
>I wonder if there will be the offshoot tuning aid. On rmmp
>he also talked of a unit which can be used on any piano.
>This unit had a pickup for each wire and magnetically
>attached itself to adjacent strings. The piano owner turns the
>pin until the display is flat (bars ascending or decending from zero).
>Move the pickup over one unison, set the display to zero.

You're not describing an thermal tuning but a mechanical one. And if 
it really is no more than a visual indicator for the tone deaf (with 
goose-neck hammer and mutes tossed in), that's a pretty dumb idea 
compared to Gilmore's thermal tuner. The only difference between this 
set-up and equipping yourself with the current ETDs is that the ETDs 
take to acoustic sound in and run it through a digital Signal 
Processor, where as this read the string's motion electromagnetically.

What is "rmmp"? It seems to be a second source for details on the 
Gilmore/QRS system. Is this where the promise that this piano can 
still be manually tuned comes from (in contradiction to Gilmore's own 
PTJ article)? Also the business about Delrin aggrapphes?

>The piano can be tuned in twenty minutes.  It only samples the 
>fundamental because the other
>harmonics are not needed according to the inventor.

Yeah, right. Sounds like another instance of an inventor having 
steadfastly refused to inform himself of the real facts of pianos.

>I think it will give a whole new
>meaning to tuning instability to a new group of pin benders.

It may just prove that the market to be cornered by making human 
piano tuners obsolete is not big enough to make it a worthwhile 
business venture.


Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.


"A jester unemployed is nobody's fool."
     ...........Danny Kaye, in "The Court Jester"
+++++++++++++++++++++