I've been thinking (that's the dangerous part) and doing some experiments. When setting ET temperament on virtually any piano—big and nicely scaled or Crappiola & Sons—the 3rd partial of D3 ends up within about 1/3 Hz of 440.00 and almost always on the sharp side, like 440.26 Hz (440.04 on an M&H A). At this pitch, that turns out to be significantly less than 1/2 bps on better pianos (almost pure) and the most I found was a little over 2 bps on a Lester She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and that one almost certainly due to compromises crossing the break. Does this not, or should it not, have big-time implications for setting or testing the temperament, as in a durn-near P12 at 3:1? Fur eggs ample: What if you tuned D3 to A4 at an exact or the teeniest bit flat 3:1 twelfth (stick a mute alongside A4 keystick to hold it down, play and tune D4 beatless at A440), then tuned your D4 to A4 as a 5th, tune A3 to A4 and compare to the D's and make sure you have two dandy octaves, 2 identical 5ths, etc? Would that not nail down four solid notes closely referenced to your foundation A4, including the stretch across the break on smaller pianos? If this is goofy, be gentle. Alan Barnard Salem, Missouri -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20060415/252c0b08/attachment.html
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