[pianotech] pitch and temperature

[Gene Nelson]

A possible alternate strategy might be to wait for one and a half hours after the heat is turned on and use the last half hour to touch up unisons?
Gene
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: chip tuthill 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 10:55 AM
  Subject: Re: [pianotech] pitch and temperature


  Same problem for me here in Colorado. No heat in the church or opera house. Tuning in gloves , hat and heavy jacket. Then the owner turns on the heat.  From 15 to 70 degrees forced hot air right on the piano. Tuning goes to hell. I turn off the heat and leave a note for the piano player- good luck. No heat for the tuning. Can only guess what did happen after I leave. Concert was in two hours.


  Chip



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Encore Pianos <encorepianos at metrocast.net>
  To: pianotech at ptg.org
  Sent: Mon, January 10, 2011 10:33:08 AM
  Subject: Re: [pianotech] pitch and temperature

  It has to be the strings.  Case in point:  I tune a small Yamaha grand for a
  church house in in an old New England Congregational style church.  Built in
  the early 1800's, big rattly windows, and no insulation.  They stopped
  heating the church between Sunday services a couple of years ago.  When I
  would come to tune the piano in January or so, they would jack the
  temperature up from 10 or 20 degrees to 70 an hour or so before I would
  come.  The church air is 70 when I get there, but the piano is so cold that
  frost is forming on the sides from the condensation (no joke!!)  I would
  spend the whole wasted two hours and 3 passes before I gave up chasing the
  pitch all over the place.  As the piano strings would warm up, the pitch
  would change so rapidly that by the time I got to the ends of the piano, the
  middle would be out again.  The rest of the piano is a thermal mass that
  takes much longer to warm up than the strings - I would have to guess many
  hours to achieve equilibrium with the air temperature and that of the
  strings - I certainly would give up long before that time.

  Will Truitt 




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