tuning anomaly

[John Formsma]

You probably need to CA the casters.  It'll fix it so G#5-C6 won't go
so flat again.

Weird about the other pitch issues.

Around here, it's been much drier than normal.  The pianos aren't
going out of tune nearly as much as usual, even for those that were
tuned in January.  For instance, one that I last tuned in January at
28% RH was today about 4-6 cents flat.  It was several degrees warmer
-- about 79º, which would account for some of the flatness.  But it
normally would have been sharp...at least in the tenor if no where
else.  But it was pretty uniformly flat, except the high treble was
roughly where it needed to be.

I've been wondering if my hygrometer was going bad, but the pianos
agree with it.

JF

On 8/21/07, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote:
>
> This morning, I tuned a Baldwin K (about a 6'? grand) in a
> high school. Rebuilt (good job) about 20 years ago, and I'd
> last tuned it in March this year at about 30%RH. It was at
> 65%RH today, so I expected the usual 20 cents sharp in the low
> tenor, with the rest not that far off. Wrong! It was about 6
> beats sharp at A-4, tapering down to about 1 beat at A-0, with
> no real discontinuity across the bass/tenor break. Strange.
>  From A-4 it went up to about 8 beats sharp at the strut, and
> about 12 beats sharp at the next strut, tapering back down to
> about 2 beats sharp at C-8. Again, the beat rates progressed
> smoothly, even across the struts. It's like it had been tuned
> that sharp intentionally. Now the fun part. Going from about 8
> beats sharp at G-5, G#-5 to C-6 were all close to 3 semitones
> low, with C#-6 going right back to the 8 beats sharp plan!! No
> detectable gremlins other than the tuning.
>
> I asked the guy when he came in to frisk everyone and
> confiscate that tuning hammer, and he swore up and down that
> nobody had touched it, and it had just gone out like that.
> Right. Hello, I'm Babbakazoo!
>
> The other three pianos were typical, so I wasn't just having a
> *really* bad day when I tuned them in March, or at least not
> all day.
>
> Tomorrow morning, I get to drive an hour to look at a Steinway
> D with reported tonal problems in octave 5-6. Gonna need more CA.
>
> Ron N
>