<HTML style="FONT-SIZE: x-small; FONT-FAMILY: MS Sans Serif"><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1251"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2838" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <P> <DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>Wow. We are miscommunication badly here. Let me 'splain.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>I wasn't offended, though perhaps I was a little put off by these words, which still seem (on the face thereof) kind of "challenging."</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>To whit:  "I am a 69 year old Aural tuner who sees absolutely no benefit in ever owning Tunelab or whatever. I am a concert tuner and to this day will put my tuning up against any of you. Among my customers are 4 PhD's in piano performance, one master in piano performance, a large number of piano teachers etc.etc.etc. Oh Yeah---I am an rpt."</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>If I read an attitude in that which you did not intend, then I heartily apologize. As I said, I wasn't looking for a fight. (Basically I believe in making love, not war. But in the early days I was conflicted in this, so I got married in order to experience both.)</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>Your Q: "How do you hear the piano when you have plugs in your ears?"</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>My A: Beats me (no pun intended), but it works amazingly. I use them whenever I'm working on a bright (and/or busy, clangy, nasty) treble, especially in a lively acoustic environment. I also use them when ambient noise is a problem, i.e., yesterday while tuning aurally in a small church--they had just varnished some woodwork so they had all the ceiling fans on full throttle and all windows opened. A giant machine was working about 200 ft away on a hillside, stuffing cut trees and limbs (looked like up to about 8 inches in diameter) into a giant chipper/shredder ... oog. In go the plugs. The screeching, whirling, and wailing disappeared (both the machine's and my own) and I was able to hear the gentle roll of happily tempered fifths. </FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>As to the Steinway reference, I might mention three points.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>1. A friend of mine tuned Steinway D's for a major symphony orchestra, and many concert artists for more than two decades--using, for the past umptiump years, an Acutuner.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>2. Direct quote from a Steinway master tech (as quoted in a Steinway class at the California State Convention 2005): "Crown shrown! Pianos under tension do not need to exhibit any measurable crown." (I wrote it down when he said it.) Certainly a debatable point.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>3. Since when have techs swallowed the Steinway line without questioning it? I'm NOT trashing S&S or their pianos -- I love 'em (mostly), they are classics -- just their cultivated, traditional, and wholly snooty attitude and their hard-to-understand, stuck-on-old-ideas view toward technology and innovation.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>I hope I was neither "hollering" nor "being upset" with you (or anyone else, for that matter). If it seemed so, I'm sorry.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>You're Q: "There is maybe one thing you ETDers can help me with. Just about every week or two I get a call from someone in the area who has just had their piano tuned and are very unhappy with the extreme last octave in the bass. This isn't just one tuner that I run into.  Invariably the last octave is so far sharp it is dissonant. Any kid with a years lessons would hear it. There is no way any tuner has listened to this. Is there something about ETDs that don't hear that last octave?"</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3>Answer: Acutuner, Tunelab, Cybertuner, and Verituner will all give you beautiful curves, from A0 to C88. The old Yamaha PT 100's did give a bass that most American ears found a little shallow, so tuners who used them tuned the base aurally (at least I did), but they would not sound as bad as your example, by any means. I suspect your area tuner is using a Peterson or some other older technology or hasn't, otherwise, a clue to what he or she is doing.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=279204016-18032006><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT face=Arial size=3>Alan R. Barnard</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT face=Arial size=3>Salem, MO</FONT></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>