[pianotech] Honky tonk tuning

Terry Farrell mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com
Tue Feb 22 20:48:57 MST 2011


Hi Robin,

Too old to raise pitch due to "not so tight" pins and 100 year old  
strings? First of all, forget the age of the strings. Just for fun I  
played around with a 1900 Everett grand that I own and cranked up the  
tension on a half dozen strings or so to see when they would break.  
They finally broke when they were about 300 cents sharp!

And the pins are not tight? They are loose? how loose? Did you try  
bringing it up to pitch to see what happens?

I guess I'm just a bugger for bringing a piano up to pitch any time I  
can.

Terry Farrell



On Feb 22, 2011, at 5:33 PM, Robin Stevens wrote:

> Had a unusual request from a customer to tune his old German piano  
> to the honky tonky sound. I was just tempted to tell him just play  
> it how it is even though it was one step flat! It’s too old to   
> raised due to not so tight pins and 100 year old strings. I remember  
> about 40 years ago when Winifred Atwell was the queen of the honky  
> tonk sound she came to Adelaide South Australia where I had the job  
> of checking the tuning of her straight strung English piano plus the  
> Steinway O she hired from the firm I worked for. I think that the  
> method was to tune the piano normally and then let one string down  
> for the vibration affect. With the advent of PDAs nowadays I am  
> wondering how many cents sharp or flat the third string is changed?  
> It would made it more even if I tune the piano first then change RCT  
> setting for that detuned string to - +10 or whatever. I don’t think  
> that the bass strings are detuned. Has anybody amongst the old  
> timers on this list remember tuning for this artist?
> Thanks
> Robin Stevens ARPT
> South Australia
> PS A youtube search has many clips of Winifred Atwell playing.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110222/7f16657a/attachment.htm>


More information about the pianotech mailing list

This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC