Yesterday I did 4 out of 5 tunings with two mutes, except I tuned the temperament octave with a strip mute and one in the bass (after tuning the unisons in the middle) . It's always amazing how much better a piano sounds this way. Same tuning style, and same octave stretch as with a strip mute, but it's just noticeably clearer and much more musical. I think some of it is that the single mutes (wide ones) are more effective at muting than a strip mute. So you have less junk to filter out. And the "Virgil effect." Like you, I tune the treble with pure to near-pure P12s. To my ear, it's what the piano calls for. In the past, it has taken me about 1.2 - 1.5 hours to tune this way, but with these it was an hour or less (except for a Steinway M that had some falseness). Interesting...not sure why except I spent less time testing in the high treble and more time listening to the single octave. Virgil is right - there's really just one right place for the high treble when you have the lower octaves done right. I also didn't have to correct as many unisons as with a strip mute. JF <div>On 3/2/07, RicB <<a href="mailto:ricb@pianostemmer.no">ricb@pianostemmer.no </a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I think the "point" is more along the lines of different strokes for different folks.  What you find works best by no means constitutes whats best for anyone else.  I personally find the strip muting method to be less dependable in terms of hitting and staying on my target.  I end up having to go back and adjust the middle string again anyways.  Tuning unisons as I go yields me better results and I have no problems whatsoever listening to my tuning as I go.  I dont find it easier to check for <<correct>> (read intended) octave check using a strip... quite the opposite. But thats just me. What works for me is what I should do.  My comments were stimulated by memories of several whom I knew back when I started in the states whom insisted that if I didnt use a strip mute I would never be able to tune a piano correctly.  A bunch of malarky.  I've taken my share of tests and am quite happy with my results.... Just tonite I had to do a 440 to 442 pitch change on a 8 month old Hamburg C... one hour was all I had before sound check.  After sound check I had a couple hours if I needed it.  I sat and just nitpicked with my handy dandy Pocket PC helping me make sure all was where I wanted it.  My aural checks are for a perfect 12th priority in the treble, adjusting as necessary for clean 4:2:1 double octaves, and I have a 6:3 octave basis for the base. Tunelab lends itself very nicely as an aid in directly confirming these relationships.  Outside of 5 or 6 notes I could have left the tuning for the concert... and even then it would have flown very nicely. I'm not boasting here mind you.  I've been at this for nigh on 35 years now... and it strikes me that very much of the  "this is the way to do it" mentality is just ... well wrong.  There are many ways of skinning the proverbial cat.  I admire a good job no matter how its done.  No matter at all that I might go about things differently then another guy. Cheers RicB </blockquote></div>