tuning exam in U.S.

[Conrad Hoffsommer]

At 20:21 06/22/2003 +0930, you wrote:
>Now that is great. Get the best instrument to do a test on. The average 
>piano tuning is on a had to tune smaller poorly scaled upright. Which is 
>harder to tune. Gee they make it easy.
>
>Tony Caught
>Adelaide Australia
>No, our Piano Technicians Guild tuning exam requires a 6-foot or larger 
>grand in reasonably good condition.
>     --David Nereson, RPT


Tony,

I agree that the small, cheap, old and other alleged pianos are hard to 
tune.  They are, however, also exponentially harder to score consistently.

If you want to test someone's ability to tune temperaments, octaves and 
unisons it stands to reason (IMMHO) that you would test on an instrument 
who's point of diminishing returns is reached somewhat later than just 
walking in the door.

Less than stellar instruments are, in a  way, EASIER to tune.  Their 
inconsistencies cover up _your_ inconsistencies.

To use a photographic analogy, let's say that I have a picture of the pin 
area of a plate which I want to put on the list.  If I scan the negative 
and reduce it to a 70-100k sized .jpg so that it can easily be sent, it 
will look good enough, and you may think that you see that the coils are 
all really neat, etc.  To be sure, however, you blow it up to full screen, 
but the only thing that gains you is a pixellated image.

If I scan it at a high resolution resulting in a .jpg of 700k-1Meg (or 
larger), when you blow it up to full screen (or larger) you might see what 
looked like a shadow is actually a fingerprint (bloody, of course) and some 
coils which aren't all that good, after all.

Which resolution would give you a better idea of workmanship?

Which piano would really give a tester a better idea of ability?



Conrad Hoffsommer

Early to rise: early to bed;
Makes a man healthy, and socially dead.