While we're trolling bad puns past Dampp-Chasers and getting entirely too many bites, I have something less fishy (maybe) concerning pianos with D-Cs. Here's the deal. Yamaha P-22s in church "classrooms", each with a full D-C installation and floor length cover. These things are Sooooo much more stable since the D-C installations (and eventual owner education as to the need to water them occasionally), but other interesting repercussions arise. When I take the cover off, and hopefully don't find both water and pad lights blinking like I did every time during the first two years, a great cloud of warm moist air billows up out of the piano when I lift the lid. It's at least 10°F warmer in the piano than the room temperature. Removing the front board lets the cooler air get to the strings, and I get to wait about 15 minutes before everything settles down enough to tune it, or I chase the temperament back and forth for 15 minutes anyway. This happens in the grands too, but not as dramatically. So what I typically do is to start with the grand in the sanctuary. I remove the cover and prop the lid up, then go remove the cover and open the lid of one of the P-22s. By the time I get back and get the grand strip muted, it's mostly calmed down enough to tune. When I'm done with the grand, I close and cover it, and go remove another cover and raise the lid of the next P-22, then go tune piano #2 while #3 is blowing off steam. While this effect is extreme when the pianos are covered to the floor, it's also noticeable in pianos with D-C systems without covers. I don't recall this ever coming up on the list before, though it probably should have a dozen times unless it's just a local anomaly of my personal universe. And yes, it's still far better than without D-Cs, but I wonder what the folks using these pianos hear when they pull the covers off and start playing. I'm an aural tuner, used to fudging and blending rather than calculating and interpolating, so it's just a nuisance to me. What do you state of the art three decimal ETD users do with these, or do you just start at A-0 and the strings have settled down by the time you get past the bichords? Curious, Ron N
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