close enough>??

[A440A@aol.com]

Greetings, 
   I have been reading the discussions on speed, tuning accuracy, etd vs. 
aural, etc..  So, this a.m.  I thought I would try a controlled test. The 
piano is a Yamaha C3, one year old.  It is in a large instrument rehearsal 
hall at the university.  I had tuned it 11/22/02 to ET at 440.  
   This morning I checked it and found it sounded reasonably in tune with 
itself insofar as unisons and single octaves were concerned.  The Double and 
Triple octaves were dead sounding and checking against the SAT, it was flat.  
The flatness was:  
A0 at -3 cents
A2 at -4
C3  -10 cents
C4 = -8
C5= -7
C6= -10
 C7= -12
C8= -14 

    I decided to do a straight, one-pass, totally machine, damn the 
torpedoes, SAT pitch raise.  I began on A0 and went to the top of the piano, 
changing the pitch correction figures at each A and D as I went.  By the time 
I reached the 5th octave, the C was -9 cents, due to the pulling done below.  
S0, I was using a 2.2 cent overpull at this point and was leaving clean 
unisons as I went.  The entire process took 54 minutes.   
   I finished just as an accompanist and two string players walked in, so 
asked them to play it and listen.  Around here, everybody knows that they can 
be honest with me, and they also know that there is no telling what sort of 
temperament I might be throwing at them, so there is no fear or loathing 
involved in letting ol' Ed know that this or that tuning doesn't work for 
them.  Their response was: 
"It sounds beautiful!"  I asked them to check the double and triple octaves.  
Their response was, " They are so clean and even!"  
   As the music, cases, and rosin bags were being opened, I zeroed the 
machine and went back to check my results.  Every single A was within one 
cent of where it was supposed to be, all the C's were too, except a slight 
sharpening in the last two octaves,(resulting, I surmise, from there being no 
further strings above them to take advantage of the overpull results). 
   So, this raises the question of always needing two passes.  Is a one cent 
variation worth the extra time? I believe it is not, in this venue, where the 
pitch will change that much from day to day, depending on the lights, 
presence of the orchestra, HVAC fluctuations,etc. Had I been in a recording 
studio,  I would have done a rough pass first, but more for insurance than 
anything else.    
    In so much of the debate over relative values of machines vs. ears,  we 
overlook the practical considerations.  I would like to see a comparison of 
results that pits two tuners against one another in a more real world 
setting. Something like, two pianos that are 8 cents flat, with maybe a 
cleaning crew in the hallway, and with a 1 hour deadline, etc.  Oh yea,  it 
would also be good for these two tuners to have already tuned two or three 
pianos in the hours previous to the test, so fatigue factors get to be 
introduced, also.   
    It is one thing to compare tuning procedures in museum or test lab 
settings, but in the real world of getting the job done for money,  I 
wouldn't begin to favor a strictly aural approach.  Perhaps on a really poor 
scale, the results would be closer, but on a good piano, in good condition, I 
submit that the use of a machine allows far better results with far less 
stress.
Regards,   
Ed Foote RPT 
( At the St. Louis regional conference several years ago, I had to tune the 
piano in 65 minutes.  It was 20 cents flat, there was a change of temperament 
to be done, and the window washers were outside the big plate glass windows 
with a large hose squirting on them as I worked.  The feedback I got that day 
in the temperament class was that the piano sounded really, really good....)