Hear Hear, Ed... As I recall... Jim Coleman Sr & Virgil Smith had a run-off on the ETD vs Aural tuning question... twice, they did... in front of a Chapter of Piano Technicians. If my memory serves me, it was something like 51vs49 for Virgil's Aural tuning the first time, and 52vs48 for Coleman's ETD... and that was w/ a SAT tuner, vs the Cybertuner or Verituner or TuneLab ETD's of today. My Verituner never has a cold or the flu, it doesn't fatigue, it's sinus is never clogged, the ears are never imbalanced, it never has a hangover... it has 2 extra batteries waiting in the wings, it has a SAT for a backup... and though I aurally tune unisons up to C7, the Verituner gets amazing unisons in the top octave w/ ease (as opposed to those who's tunings I follow...). Even Virgil (in one of his last postings) saw the advantages of ETD's like the Verituner. But it really boils down to this... what kind of tuning can you produce on a regular basis, day in and day out... and what method do you use to produce this consistency and sweetness. Some RPT's could pass the Tuning test on each & every piano's tuning. We certainly know the ETD's of today can. The choice is up to you. Some calculate numbers in their head or w/ pencil & paper... others use HP-12C's or Excel spreadsheets... or even http://www.wolframalpha.com/ Use whatever method you enjoy... just make sure you get the right answer, each & every time. Bill Fritz, St Louis ===== There may be some aural tuners that can surpass the ETD on full size pianos, but I haven't seen one in a long time, and submit that they are the exception to the rule. At the root is how accurately can we measure? Do you want a carpenter that uses a measuring tape or one that eyeballs everything? Regards, Ed Foote RPT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110127/4a21b8c0/attachment.htm>
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