false beats, real jazz and satisfaction

[Karl kaputt]

I had a concert tuning today for Charlie Mariano, with his 86 years one of 
the last dinosaurs of jazz. When I left home it was clear for me not to do 
just a good job but to give my very very best. The piano was a Yamaha M110 
upright, 15 years old and not played much.

Tenor and middle were not flat, but bass and treble were 5-9 cent flat, so I 
decided to do a pitch raise only in bass and trebble before fine tuning. 
While measuring the frequencies in the treble I noticed extreme false beats, 
making it impossible to tune fine unisons. So, I decided to settle the 
strings on the bridge by hammering them at the bridge pins with a brass bar. 
The same in the bass section at the upper and lower end of the strings. The 
false beats were not only diminished, there were gone all away! Tuning was a 
joy which I didn´t expect with a small piano like that.

Because I own a verituner since a few weeks I tried to give it a chance to 
prove it´s real potential, making the best tuning possible with a small 
piano like that. Unfortunately I am still not used to use an ETD, so it 
still takes me more time than an aural tuning. At the end it took me more 
than 2 hours to tune, but the result was real fantastic. It´s a long time 
ago that I made such an excelent aural tuning like that on a relative small 
Yamaha.

While assembling the piano after tuning I noticed that the felt of the 
moderator was too low so that the hammers touched it, but I couldn´t 
position it correctly because the spring of the moderator rail was worn out. 
Therefore I wired a new spring for it (I have spring wire of different 
thickness in my tool case for making new springs for dampers and other 
applications in old pianos).

After all, tuning, voicing and repair took me 2 hours and 45 minutes and I 
was really satisfied with the excellent result. Unfortunately I won´t charge 
anything for that because the pianist of that concert is a piano teacher who 
often recommended my service and I got many many customers due to his 
recommendations. Therefor I decided to never charge anything when working 
for him. Anyway, it was a succesfull and satisfying day.

By the way: why are false beats always stronger at the left of the 3 strings 
in the treble? I noticed that on many ocasions but I have no explanation for 
that.

Gregor

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