You neglected to mention if there had been a change in the humidity? I always mark the temperature and humidity on the bill. If the humidity changes, say during a season change, the pitch can change in less time than that. If you tuned during the heating season, and then returned when the weather was warm and/or the furnace off. The humidity would be higher, along with the pitch. John Ross On 16-Dec-08, at 8:27 PM, reggaepass at aol.com wrote: > List, > > I just had my second go-around at trying to get a piano that had > been tuned in an unusual way for a long time back to "normal". It > was in a tuning that had some notes near normal tension, others up > to a quarter-tone flat, and still others as far sharp(!). In > addition, the piano had been in that tuning for the past eight years > (most of them in Germany--it is a 1904 Schwechten grand with a > bridge design I've not seen before). > > On my first visit to start the long journey home to equal > temperament at A=440, I started by doing a pass using the pitch- > change function on anAccutuner (which determines off-sets for each > note independently of what came before, and I measured for every > note). That got it close enough to follow immediately with a > straight machine tuning (with recalculated FAC), unisons-as-you-go > from A0 to C8. The piano had been vastly transformed, although I > cautioned that there were no guarantees how long it would sound in > tune. > > The owner reported that the piano s tarted going out of tune within > weeks of the last servicing. When I returned for a follow-up visit > three and a half months later, I was unprepared for what I > encountered. Some notes, the ones that had been sharp, had crept > back up in pitch, many nearly 100% (!!) of the way back up to where > they had been for those eight long years. > > I've done many alternate tunings, almost always lowering pitch and > never raising individual notes more than 10 cents or so. But after > a pitch-raise and a tuning or two, things have always returned to > normal in a rather predictable way. I have never tuned notes 50 > cents sharp nor have I ever left an alternative tuning on a piano > for more than a few weeks at a shot. (Last week we tuned a concert > grand to select instruments from one of our Balinese gamelans, but > the piano spent less than a week from the first "Balinese" tuning to > the retuning to ET @440.) > > Has anyone else out there had any experience with notes and/or > entire pianos being tuned sharp for prolonged periods of time? If > so, did you observe the same kind of behavior upon retuning? What > would be the most efficient way to get it back to "normal"? > > Thanks & Happy Holidays, > > Alan Eder > > Listen to 350+ music, sports, & news radio stations – including > songs for the holidays – FREE while you browse. Start Listening Now! John Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081216/bbd74784/attachment-0001.html>
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