<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> <font face="Courier New, Courier, monospace">I think it's very bright, Tom. <br> <br> Among other virtues, such as speed, you are treating each pin exactly the same way, which <br> improves uniformity of result. <br> <br> I've experimented with moving the pin a guessed amount without playing the note. It's surprisingly <br> accurate. I suppose our right arms and hands have repeated this action while our ears noted the <br> results so many times that they know what to do, even without the aural reinforcement. <br> "What fires together, wires together." (Hebbian learning, it's called.)<br> <br> If I'm doing a big pitch raise on an old and fragile-looking instrument, I tune to pitch <br> quickly the first time, then I do any necessary overpull the second time. My thinking is <br> that moving the wire the first time is the most risky, because it's sometimes stuck in <br> place. By doing one pass only to pitch, the overpull on the second pass is much less, <br> and the wire is moving from a new and unstuck place. <br> <br> Susan Kline, in a land where pianos do not need pitch lowering every year .... well, <br> a beat or two, like this week. A Hawaiian Wet Front just came through. The place is <br> dripping wet and pretty warm as well. More like Brazil than Oregon. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> </font><br> Tom Driscoll wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:CE5BABAB40F14F52A328C90E07A89AD9@acer42041e6643" type="cite"> <meta content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.19328"> <style></style> <div> </div> <div><font face="Arial">List,</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">    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 )</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">    Case in point last week :   Steinway L from the 50's in a high school chorus room here in Massachusetts.(no climate control)</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">   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 </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">sharp from the tenor break on up. Bass maybe 5-10 cents sharp.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">   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 .</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">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</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">in each section. </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">   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</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">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.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">The whole operation takes about  5-7 minutes. </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">   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 </font></div> <div><font face="Arial"> 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 </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">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 .</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">  The whole process takes 20 - 30 minutes tops. </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">I then tune as per usual technique and I seem to have fewer strings creeping  sharp given the time spent on the pitch lowering.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial"> I think a version of this was mentioned in the journal way back when.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial">    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 .</font></div> <div> </div> <div><font face="Arial">Thoughts ?</font></div> <div><font face="Arial"> Tom Driscoll</font></div> <div><font face="Arial"> </font></div> <div><font face="Arial"> </font></div> <div><font face="Arial">   </font></div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> </blockquote> </body> </html>