for those on the fence about hearing protection..

[Richard Brekne]

Hi JF

I almost decided to drop a comment along the lines of  <<define 
pounding>>, but then several of the more enthusiastic pro-pounding posts 
have included comments along the lines of providing near nuclear blasts 
to the keys... :)  Ok thats an over statement but when folks mention its 
not too hard until you start breaking things, and that if you dont beat 
it into tuning the pianist will beat it out of tuning then I kinda get 
the idea one is talking about a fairly severe blow... something in the 
neighborhood of an ffff+ thing I supose.  I seldom get above simple 
fortisimo... that is to say a single solitary f.  My tunings hold up 
extremely well.  And I am a long ways from the only tuner I am aware of 
who has very stable tunings and does not bang away with heavy test blows 
or in any sense of the word use test blows to bang the thing into tune.  
The various pounding tools I've seen demonstrated on occasion just plain 
scare me... but to each their own.

All this said... I suppose it would be a good idea to somehow quantify 
exactly how hard each of us hits when these discussions come up...as in 
some kind of pounds quantity.  In the end tho..... you can indeed tune 
with very quite blows and end up with very stable results if you just 
develop your hand, arm and wrist technique appropriately.  I can do it, 
and I've seen it done by more then a few others.

Cheers
RicB


    Al and Ric,
    We probably have different definitions of "pounding."

    There was a tuner in the area that *every* strike was about as loud
    as my
    normal test blow (90-100 dB).  Then his test blows were even louder
    than his
    normal, which were louder than my test blow.

    It's probably all in the definition.  I'm not a pounder by my friend's
    definition, or by my own definition.  I might be by yours.  And as I
    said
    early on in this discussion, I'm always open to learning different
    ways of
    stabilization.   (Like using a hammer shank, which I brought up a
    few years
    back.  It works, but it's more cumbersome.)

    --
    JF