Tuning Stabilty Question

[Joe And Penny Goss]

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Hi Robert,
Please define out of tune. ie, unisons, stretch, Bass to tenor??
Joe Goss RPT
Mother Goose Tools
imatunr@srvinet.com
www.mothergoosetools.com
  ----- Original Message -----=20
  From: Robert Finley=20
  To: pianotech@ptg.org=20
  Sent: Monday, July 04, 2005 11:26 AM
  Subject: Tuning Stabilty Question


  I would like to ask your opinion about piano tuning stability. Last =
weekend we finished our international piano competition in Boston. It =
began on Wednesday June 22nd. I was the director of the competition and =
had a lot of administrative work to do.

  A couple of weekends before the competition I made several visits to =
the college and tuned four of the practice pianos, because last time in =
2003 they were badly out of tune. They hadn't been tuned since January, =
the beginning of the semester, and I thought I would save our =
organization some money.=20

  The pianos were very old (looked as if they were from the early =
1900s), and consisted of two Steinway Bs, a Steinway A, and  a Baldwin =
Hamilton Studio console.  They didn't seem to have been looked after =
very well. There were paper clips, pins, dust and other debris inside. =
Some of the tuning pins were rather loose. The music stand on a Steinway =
B was broken and in terrible shape.=20

  I used the SAT III to  to tune them. I applied strong blows to =
equalize the tension in the strings, and lighter listening blows to =
check the resultant tuning. When I finished each piano, there was a very =
big improvement, and I could have given a recital on each of them. The =
notes had a bell like clarity, although the tone of the Baldwin upright =
was rather mediocre.=20

  During the competition, the practice pianos were in use from 8 am =
until 11 pm each day by contestants. They practiced such things as the =
Prokofiev Toccata, Rachmaninoff Etudes, Liszt etc, and they began to go =
out of tune. The air conditioning in the building cycled on and off =
during the night and day. They were in quite out of tune by the end of =
the competition.=20

  My question is, would you typically expect pianos to go out of tune =
under these circumstances or should they have held their tuning better? =
I know it is difficult to say without seeing the pianos, but I just =
wondered what your opinion might be.  I'm not sure what else I could =
have done to make the pianos hold their tuning longer. I couldn't go in =
to re-tune them because they were constantly in use by the contestants =
from morning to late at night. I was also overloaded with work, running =
the competition, so I wouldn't have had the time anyway.=20

  Thanks for your thoughts and a happy July 4th.=20

  Robert Finley
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