<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: Cracking the unisons</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <BLOCKQUOTE>Cracking the unison was described by Virgil Smith in PTG 2/95, althou= gh for him it was a very casual matter. I referred to it as "prior art= " in my 1/97 article, although when I first tumbled on it, it quickly t= ook on the highly aural useful technique pitch shimming. In years of convers= ation, I never ran across anyone doing something similar. This is not to cla= im ownership of the technique of pitch shimming (or even unison cracking), j= ust to observe that as a seemingly simple technique ready to be stumbled on = by any aural tuner, it's a remarkably obscure one. </BLOCKQUOTE> Hey, Bill---to me, pitch shimming is synonymous with cracking a unison: &nb= sp;making micro-incremental pitch shifts in a 3 string note; I think experie= nced tuners start doing it unconsciously at some point, but it never really = blossomed for me as a foundational tuning tool until I threw my felt strip a= way and started tuning unisons fully on the fly---open-string tuning.  = Now, 5 years later, I literally sculpt and balance the temperament by very f= ast and precise shimming of the unisons---and I can set a highly idealized, = close-to-perfect temperament, solid as a rock, all open strings, on basicall= y any piano, in 15-20 minutes. Pitch shimming is also incredibly useful as you tune down into the bottom o= f the piano, especially in the all-important and devilish tenor break area--= -the horrific, deliberately confusing end of the long bridge----aaahhhhhhh!!= !! I scared myself.....But reallly, this a, perhaps the, crucial area of the= piano to tune.  If you get it right, and the octaves are stretched jus= t the slightest bit flat as they should be, you move to the bass with confid= ence. OK?  OK then...... Best, David Andersen </BODY> </HTML>