weirdly out of tune Kawai

[Alan Barnard]

Somebody, incompetent, was the last to toon it, my bet. Possibly the owner got out his trusty centering-needle guitar tuner and had a go at saving the tuning fee ... now too embarrassed to admit it. Just a guess.



Alan Barnard

Salem, MO









Original message

From: "Tom Sivak" 

To: pianotech 

Received: 8/9/2007 9:26:53 PM

Subject: weirdly out of tune Kawai





List

Pianos always seem to go out of tune more near the plate struts.  The tenor break can be sharp this time of year, even though the rest of the piano is close to pitch.  We've all seen this happen on various pianos, in various ways. 

OK, today was a new one on me. 

The piano was a Kawai 502S.  A4 was about 15 cents sharp.  A3 was about 30 cents sharp.  At this point, I knew that most, if not all, of the piano would be sharp.  

Wrong.



Notes in the temperament octave were variously 15 cents sharp, 15 cents flat, or right on pitch.  Then I headed south toward the bass.

The lowest steel string was F#3, and it was 35 cents sharp.  F3, the first wound string, was 10 cents flat.  E3, D# 3, still on the treble side of the break were also about 10 cents flat.   At this point, I figured that all the wound strings would be flat.  Maybe this was a relatively new piano and the wound strings had stretched since the last tuning.

Wrong.

D3, the highest bass string on the bass side of the break, was 25 cents sharp.  So were most of the bass strings until I got down the monochords, which were suddenly 30 to 50 cents flat, with no transition.  (from sharp to flat I mean)

Going up from the temperament octave, strings were still sharp until right before the break.  F5 was 20 cents sharp.  F#5, the note just to the left of the break, was 25 cents flat.  Just to the right of the break (G5), 45 cents flat!  G#5 45 cents flat!  A5, 35 cents flat.  And then A#5 was sharp, and then sharp, sharp all the way till the top octave, where suddenly notes were 25 to 50 cents flat.

It was like taking the RPT exam all over again.

I don't think the plate was separating from the block or frame, because the piano took it's tuning properly and nothing seemed out of ordinary during the pitch raise/drop, or the tuning.  

Never seen a piano go out of tune like that one, though.  I guess the previous tuning could have been awry, but not by that much!  The piano had to help things along.  (I don't know how long it had been since it was tuned before.  This was a new client.)



Any comments?



Tom Sivak

Chicago
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