<HTML>In a message dated 3/11/02 6:03:57 PM Central Standard Time, Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no (Richard Brekne) writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I have actually had the chance to start checking out the validity of this statement, and find it to be resoundingly false. True, ET is a tough cookie...but way more then a "very few" can tune it.  It may be true perhaps that there are some common errors and tendancies for less experienced or for those who dont really persue the beast...  yet my preliminary findings in looking informally into the matter point quite clearly in the direction that todays tuners are quite capable of tuning what can only be termed as a true ET. Might be fun to see just how many of us really pull off a good ET, and try and find out what it took for us to learn in the end how to do it. </BLOCKQUOTE> Well, Richard, it wasn't what I found today.  I was asked to go to a church about 25 miles away with 2 new Yamahas, a P-22 in the choir loft and a G2 in the sanctuary (I saw the price tag of the grand in the bench, $18,133).  The church musicians were not happy with the tuning from the Yamaha dealer's tuner. I'm sorry to say that in no way could anyone have ever claimed either of these pianos to be in ET.  It was, as usual, Reverse Well with the C major chord sounding the worst of the 12, a screaming CE 3rd, far in excess of 22 cents, probably about 30 but the Db sounded as pure as our March snow.  I know who did that tuning and I know that he is one of those very bitterly outspoken denouncers of both PTG and HT's. Richard, I listen to pianos all the time, both here, in my area and everywhere I travel.  I do occasionally find a good representation of ET.  Sometimes, to my surprise, I find a mild WT as I did at the Steinway dealership in Los Angeles last June.  But the great majority of what I hear is not really ET and most often is Reverse Well. You can say what you want, "yeah, all the fellas tune a good ET, I've checked" but I'll be the first to report 10 ET's in a row that I find. Hell will freeze over before it ever happens.  My presesnt day experience, coupled with all that I read from documentation in the past leads me to believe that ET itself is in most cases, the myth.  It may have been proposed, it may have been figured out mathematically, there may have been a  monochord, a "tonometer", then the strobe tuner to help some people get closer to ET.  But only now, in the last 20 years with advanced aural knowledge and ETD's can the very best technicians really tune a true ET. Now, I would concede that maybe the people whose temperaments you have listened to recently must be among the very best. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> </HTML>