[pianotech] Was high and outside now silent pitch lowering

[Susan Kline]

I think it's very bright, Tom.

Among other virtues, such as speed, you are treating each pin exactly 
the same way, which
improves uniformity of result.

I've experimented with moving the pin a guessed amount without playing 
the note. It's surprisingly
accurate. I suppose our right arms and hands have repeated this action 
while our ears noted the
results so many times that they know what to do, even without the aural 
reinforcement.
"What fires together, wires together." (Hebbian learning, it's called.)

If I'm doing a big pitch raise on an old and fragile-looking instrument, 
I tune to pitch
quickly the first time, then I do any necessary overpull the second 
time. My thinking is
that moving the wire the first time is the most risky, because it's 
sometimes stuck in
place. By doing one pass only to pitch, the overpull on the second pass 
is much less,
and the wire is moving from a new and unstuck place.

Susan Kline, in a land where pianos do not need pitch lowering every 
year .... well,
a beat or two, like this week. A Hawaiian Wet Front just came through. 
The place is
dripping wet and pretty warm as well. More like Brazil than Oregon.





Tom Driscoll wrote:
>  
> List,
>     This thread has prompted me to bring up a pitch lowering method 
> I've been fooling around with the past few years.(especially when 
> under  time constraints )
>     Case in point last week :   Steinway L from the 50's in a high 
> school chorus room here in Massachusetts.(no climate control)
>    With the last tuning in April the piano was @ pitch.The high 
> humidity of our New England summer drives this thing to as much as 30 
> -40 cents
> sharp from the tenor break on up. Bass maybe 5-10 cents sharp.
>    Now this is not a concert situation but getting the thing down to 
> 440 with reasonable stability is the goal. I'll be back in a few 
> months to retune .
> Using my accu-tuner I pulled down the middle string of all the C's 
> to around  - 8 c flat or so and use muscle memory to feel the pin 
> movement with amount  of  "tick " required
> in each section.
>    Then without playing the notes I have one hand on the tuning lever 
> head and one on the ball end of the Driscoll CF Tuning Lever (sorry ) 
> and move really fast from pin to pin trying to replicate the pin 
> movement from the samples
> The exact order probably doesn't matter but from the break on up I 
> lower the middle string then the right string from the top down then 
> the left string from the top down.
> The whole operation takes about  5-7 minutes.
>    There are certainly some strings that are way off but the thing is 
> reasonably chromatic and around pitch. After a  quick pull down on the 
> bass
>  I then strip mute the entire piano and speed tune the middle strings 
> with the ETD.  Then tune the right string to the center from the top 
> removing the strip as I go then left string
> to the other two from the top down  (A spin on the 1970's 
> Coleman-Defebaugh P.R. method) then another quick pass in the bass .
>   The whole process takes 20 - 30 minutes tops. 
> I then tune as per usual technique and I seem to have fewer strings 
> creeping  sharp given the time spent on the pitch lowering.
>  I think a version of this was mentioned in the journal way back when.
>     I only do this a few times a year so without much science behind 
> me I'm thinking that the double pass in such a short time 
> creates better stability .
>  
> Thoughts ?
>  Tom Driscoll
>  
>  
>   
>  
>  
>  
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