[pianotech] Stability techniques

[Ed Foote]

 Phil asks: 
 > I'm wanting to hear how those who have concert work responsibilities > stabilize your tunings. I use to run arpeggios and play hard triads up and > down until I saw Steve Brady's Fore Arm Smash method. I gave it a shot.  
> How do you stabilize your tuning? 
 

 Greetings, 
  inre grand pianos:
   Stability comes from the top string being left with more tension than the speaking length, but not so much more that it can overcome the friction of the agraffe or bearing surfaces.  
    After sweating about stability in the recording environment, (which is full of producers spending large amounts of money on sessions that they DON'T want to delay for touch-up), I have, for many years, used a single move downward, i.e.  the last movement of the hammer is a single push from the sharp side to where my hand, ear, arm, and experience, tell me the pitch needs to be relative to the resistance of the bearing surfaces between the pin and speaking length.   I pull thestring sharp by maybe five cents and give it a FF blow. Then, with a fairly soft blow, Ilower it to the pitch I want, relax my grip. Another FF blow, while giving the pin a slight wiggle,  "proofs" the setting.  
    There is more than one place a pin can be left and not allow the string to move under play, and this zone is where I aim for. If I find that I have a perfectly stable pitch that is 1 cent too low, I can turn the pin the smallest increment possible and re-stabilize.    Extremely tight pins require that I go flat before I release the hammer, and the pin torque/flex pulls the string back up into the zone. This approach negates any "jumping" pin problems, goes fast, and is easily practiced on pitch raises.  With practice, it becomes second nature to coordinate the overshoot with the friction so that when the pitch comes up, it will land in that zone. If the hammer is perpendicular to the string, I have to go farther because there is more flex introduced. If the pin is loose, I use this.  Looser pinsoften require that I only drop it to pitch and allow the instilledtorque in the pin to draw the top string back tighter. I may even introduce some downward flex on the hammer so that upon release, the top string tightens even more.  This flex is not "pin-bending", and many of the instruments I tune are tuned weekly to no ill effects over the years.  
  I could demonstrate this in less time than it takes to write it.
    Pounding is hard on the joints, the action, and the ears. Finesse is more stable and less damaging.  
Regards,
 Ed Foote RPT
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
 ( some years ago, Jerry Lee Lewis told me in no uncertain terms that the tuning would be demolished by the end of his session.  When it was over, he hadn't even come close to knocking anything out of tune!) 
 
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