Moving from Uprights to Grands

[Susan Kline]

At 11:21 AM 7/20/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>When someone feels he/she may be ready to begin trying their hand
>at tuning Grand pianos, (when all they have had experience tuning is
>Uprights), what should they do first?

While I'm sure you can work it out for yourself, especially with
all the hints you've received, you might feel better doing it if
you just watch a good technician tuning a grand first.

It's certainly no harder than an upright, except that some of the
instruments are much better and much, much more expensive.

And yes, raise the dampers with the pedal before you put in a strip
mute. Otherwise, whenever you play a note you can drag out the little
ends of the split wedge felt.

Also, if you are ever tempted to drive down a loose tuning pin in a grand,
though that is getting to be an obsolete technique these days, be
aware that if you don't remove the action and support the bottom
of the pinblock, you can cause delamination. Not a good thing at all, at all.

Susan Kline