Sunday ramblings

[J Patrick Draine]

David,
Thanks to El Nino & global climate warpage (yeah I know it's hard to
think of it as "warming" when all the fruit & vegetables in CA are
freezing on the vines) you're getting a hint (but just a hint) of what
life is like for those of us in the truly temperament (aka usually
goddamn cold in the winter) zones.
Two passes for every tuning,  yes, even the dreaded Wurlitzer and
Aeolian spinets (hi Jon) and aged Baldwin Hamiltons in the schools. No
surcharges for regular customers but no discounts for institutional
accounts.
It's difficult to get worked up about the VSI effect under these
circumstances unless it's a concert level situation (on the other hand
you're usually in the circumstance of such a stable RH that you can
ultrafine tune that section).
I do recall that V Smith and A Sanderson co-taught a class at an
annual PTG Convention (2002 I think), with Sanderson making very
accurate measurements of the phenom, but I skipped the class and I
don't think Al Sanderson ever pubished any articles regarding his
findings.
Until recently the weather pattern had been unseasonably warm here in
New England, but we're finally rather cold, and the pianos are
reacting -- time to head out and tune some of them.
Patrick Draine

On 1/22/07, David Andersen <david at davidandersenpianos.com> wrote:
> Hey, fellow artisans------
>
> Now I know, a little bit, what it's like to live where the humidity
> changes constantly; we're in a literally unprecedented stretch of
> dryness here in Southern California, and I'm having to do 2 passes on
> almost every piano I tune, even the super-stable bi-weekly or monthly
> ones. Yow. It's a lotta woik. But a lot of cashola; I charge $50 for
> an "easy" pitch raise---between 2 and 4 cents below pitch, the high
> treble on or close to pitch---and $75 for anything further down than
> that.
>
> It's fascinating; I find that, even in pianos that I've tuned
> constantly for years, the VSP---the Virgil Smith Phenomenon---
> when the pitch of a single unison string will change to some degree
> when the other two strings are brought into tune with it---gets more
> intense, and sometimes in a slightly different pattern, when the
> board and bridges have been subjected
> to, in our case, a consistently 20-25 point lower RH average for the
> last 6-8 months.  Why is that, O spatial and mechanical genii?
> Nossaman? Overs?
>
> David Andersen
>