[pianotech] How long do unisons hold?

[reggaepass at aol.com]

I get the impression that the general piano-owning public thinks a tuning should stay perfectly locked-in for about a year. 
... or six months, or whatever interval they have come to accept, and then, supposedly the piano SUDDENLY goes out of tune. 


Alan Eder


-----Original Message-----
From: David Nereson <da88ve at gmail.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Sent: Tue, Mar 9, 2010 10:32 am
Subject: Re: [pianotech] How long do unisons hold?


No tuning is rock-solid, as much as the most confident of us would like to think they are. Many recording studios tune once a month. At many concerts, a tuner comes out during intermission to touch-up unisons. I just now did a freebie touch-up for a client whose piano I tuned a month ago. If she just played Debussy all the time, it probably wouldn't have needed it, but she plays rock, gospel, and jazz, and quite forcefully, on a piano that has very hard hammers. But she still wonders what's wrong with the piano when a few unisons have drifted after a month. 
  I get the impression that the general piano-owning public thinks a tuning should stay perfectly locked-in for about a year. But they just don't. Yes, there are those old pianos that stay almost rock-solid for 5 or 10 years, but they're one-in-a-hundred. As previous PTG brochures on tuning have pointed out, we're lucky pianos stay in tune as long as they do, with their essentially 18th century technology, and their 12 to 20 tons of tension on the plate and each string under 75 - 150 lbs. of tension. Other (non-fixed pitch) instruments are tuned about every time they're played. 
  I've often tuned pianos where, as I'm packing up my tools, the customer tries a few notes, and I can hear a unison or two that has already drifted. This is usually when a pitch raise has just been carried out, but not always. I'm afraid stability is an elusive goal, but we try our best. 
  --David Nereson, RPT 
 
 

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