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Perhaps some examiners for the PTG tuning test could comment on what the quickest time they have seen a testee complete a tuning test and pass. This would give a better idea of what level of tuning, refinement and completeness we are talking about here. My assumption from my own experiences of being tested by my school over 20 years ago was that after about an hour and a half the tuning was more or less complete but I went back and utilized the extra 1/2 hour I still had to improve it. I'm sure it would have passed without it but I believe I got the higher score because of it. Can the same be said for a 30-40 minute tuning at a clients?

Emmery:

I believe that the PTG tuning exam requires that only the unisons of the middle two octaves be tuned. So I wouldn't compare the time to a full tuning.

From what I've seen when I assisted with the tuning exam and I don't do a lot of them, most of them utilize the whole time doing what you did Emmery. Going back over to double check things. I did the same thing when I was finished with my exam. Just double checked it all. I was finished before the allotted time but, I couldn't find them anywhere so, I just sat and waited for them to return using that time to check it again. One thing I found useful too, was to stop twice for about 5-10 minutes to let my ears rest about 1/2 way to about 3/4 of the way through.

As for the 30-40 minute tunings, I don't know as if anyone has ever been checked that way in a PTG exam, maybe? I do know of some tuners that could pass it in that amount of time if there wasn't a pitch raise involved.

I don't think only the unisons of the middle 2 octaves are done Jeff although that section (maybe 3 octaves) is where its mandatory to be done aurally without aid from an ETD. The whole piano is tuned and if I'm not mistaken, I believe 2 hours are allotted for it. I can assume from this that the PTG (if I'm correct about the time) and the higher end piano technology school examiners think that 2 hours would be the limit if the piano is only slightly detuned where raising pitch is a non issue. In this area in Canada pitch raising is quite common between seasonal changes and even the once a year pianos often need sections brought up to pitch for a good fine tuning to take place.

Here's a good explanation of the tuning exam.

Tuning Exam

The RPT Tuning Exam tests your skills in tuning; your examiners will compare your tuning note by note to a "master tuning." In preparation for exam day, a committee of three or more RPTs, under the direction of a Certified Tuning Examiner (CTE), tunes a good quality grand piano at least 5'9" in length until all agree that the tuning is optimal. They then use an electronic tuning device to measure the tuning precisely, and make a record of each note and its pitch measurement on a specified partial. This record is the "master tuning" for this piano. Examiners will likewise measure your tuning of the same piano, and then, by means of a computer or handscoring program, pitch-correct and compare it to the master tuning. When the measurement of a given note of your tuning differs from the master tuning by more than the tolerance allowed after correction for overall pitch, the CTE will record the appropriate penalty points on the scoreform as indicated by the scoring program. Then, listening to intervals along with you as directed by the CTE, examiners will aurally verify some or all of these points and thus confirm the scoring. If examiners believe that a note in question cannot be improved, the CTE may cross off the penalty point for that note.

The Tuning Exam is scored in eight sections over two parts: Part 1, with pitch, temperament and midrange sections, and Part 2, with bass, treble, high treble, stability and unisons sections. You need to score at least 80% in each section to pass. In Part 1, you aurally tune the middle two octaves, using a non-visual pitch source to set A4 at A440. In Part 2, you may tune the remaining octaves by any method you choose, and after the stability test you complete the exam by aurally tuning midrange unisons.

You should bring your own tuning tools to the test. Examiners usually will have already muted and de-tuned the piano when you arrive. Every other note is de-tuned slightly sharp, and the remaining notes slightly flat so as not to disturb the overall tension. Except for unisons, you will tune one string per note, usually the center string.

You will have 45 minutes total for Part 1, 60 minutes for Part 2, and 30 minutes for unisons. Also, you will have up to 5 minutes at the beginning of Part 1 to set pitch on the center string of note A4. Whether or not you pass pitch at this point, you will then have the balance of Part 1 time to finish tuning octaves 3 and 4. If you do not pass pitch at first, examiners will de-tune A4 and give you a second chance, remeasuring A4 at the end of your Part 1 time. The accuracy of your pitch source is your responsibility; you may ask examiners to check it prior to your exam and/or lend you a more accurate pitch source if you feel yours is not sufficiently accurate.

As you begin Part 2, tuning the octaves beyond the midrange, you may wish to correct notes that caused penalty points in your midrange before proceeding; this can sometimes be helpful (you be the judge), but cannot change your Part 1 scores. After Part 2 scoring and aural verification, examiners will administer the stability test on the center string of each midrange note. In this test, three firm test blows are struck and before-and-after measurements taken to ascertain any pitch changes. After the stability test, you tune the midrange unisons, outside strings to the middle. After examiners measure and score any questionable unisons, your exam is complete. Then, if time permits, your examiners will review your test and suggest or demonstrate ways to improve your tuning.

Emmery:

I haven't taken the ETD graded exam, but This Link seems to indicate that only the midrange unisons are tuned. Maybe someone that is involved with the exams can confirm this.

I've been prepping for the exams for a few months now, and plan to take the tech and tuning exam by end of summer. Tooner is correct. Only in the two middle octaves are the unisons tuned. I've read that they assume, if one can tune the unisons to within a 1 cent tolerance, the examinee can tune unisons in the upper and lower end. Not sure this is a good indicator of this though.

As far as tuning time versus tuning exam times, to me they are not related. I usually tune a piano in an hour to an hour and a half. The times depends on how long it's been since the last tuning. But I will likely take the maximum time allowed on each section of the exam, to tune and to repeatedly make checks.

For guys like me who haven't learned to do large pitch raises blindly....

Which do you guys find faster, using an ETD and just cranking up the pins till the lights/display aren't moving so much, or doing it aurally and, for a piano that's $2 flat, tuning the A to the B, the Bb to the Db, the C to the D, etc? (meaning playing the major 2nd interval and tuning the lower note to the upper one) Assume that all strings would be open (no muting done).
When I'm doing a minor pitch raise I will usually mute all but 1 string of each note I'm tuning, but if it's more than about 30-40¢ off I won't mute, and sometimes when it's not quite that far.

How refreshing! That's really true....thank you for the candor and for mentioning that not every tuning is, or can be, a "concert tuning".

We tuners are called on to facilitate playability on some instruments than cannot achieve a high end result, and personally I think it is a mark of personal integrity that a tuner be able to admit this to the customer and to him/herself.

Its about pleasing the customer, and although a huge percentage of my clients have great pianos and we aim very high on those instruments, there are some instruments that just cannot be tuned too well. For these good people, we do our best and try to assist the best we can, and also with action/touch issues...managing customer expectations is important.

I've never spent more than 2 hours doing any tuning (and I'd go batty if I had to!) and most times even with a pitch raise environment I'm done in 90 minutes with one ugly pass, one normal pass and a last pass tweaking my forearm smashed unisons. On nice pianos such as some church grands I'll come back in a week or two and they're still right on (mostly)....on others, we'll need another pass in a few weeks to settle it.

When given a budget, we'll try to sell three visits...one to pull tension up a bit sharp of 440 and leave it playable but still wanting, the second to raise again and settle it, in a week, and a final visit in another couple weeks. I have found that seperating the visits absolutely gives a greater stability, but YMMV.

RPD

Nicely put RPD and thank you.

Hehe, with a memory like mine, (rotten) I still remembered "YMMV!" Your miles may vary!

88:

I am not a fan of doing a pitch raise by tuning each note to a note above it. It seems that the bass is affected by a drop in pitch less than the treble, and the high treble usually needs to be raised much more than the tenor. Yes the pitch is raised and the tension is brought up, but not to where it needs to be.

I know you asked about ETD pitch raises, but I can't comment on that. I use blind pitch raises mostly to even out the pitch and tension so that when I pitch raise or tune it will stay where it belongs better.

For pitch raises I have been using a temperament strip and setting a rough temperament. Then I raise one string on all the treble F's going up and the unisons on all the treble F's going down. Same with the F#s and so on. Then the bass is raised as usual and finally the temperament strip removed as the tenor unisons are raised.

If the piano was more than 50 cents flat, it will probably need a second pitch raise even with some overshoot, which I am conservative with.

I think that a piano that requires a major pitch raise will stay in tune better if a week or more is allowed before a final tuning. But I no longer do so. I figure that if the piano is that far out of tune, the customer will not notice the small difference in the tuning a month later. And if they do notice, then they can have more frequent tunings. I do mention that since the piano hadn't been tuned in a while, that it will not stay in tune as long as if it had been tuned regularly.

Hope this helps.

Getting here late...

Pitch raising/lowering falls into two camps:

1.fast and dirty - just crank 'em and keep moving, the real tuning will come later.

2. Use a calibrated over/underpull to allow for the system to settle during the first pass. (Electronic specific, though I'm sure some aural techs have a good system to match.) Set pins as normal and leave any "dead on" notes as freebies on the tuning pass.


I've used both, though tend towards the 2nd for anything under 50 cents or so from pitch. Our seasonal shifts for non climate controlled instruments can be 20 to 25 cents in the midrange. Since most of my work is on existing customers, I don't often have to do the massive pitch adjustments anymore.

You can check out my youtube videos in my signature. There are 6 ten-minute videos showing a multi-pass pitch raise. I started with this specific question from the Verituner crowd - "how to get anywhere close to in tune in an hour". The piano is a practice room - a beat up Mason and Hamlin upright that was the worst I could find that week. I started from scratch instead of using a saved file to illustrate my process on a new client. Normally I use a saved file and go from A0 to C88 because that has been demonstrated to be more stable and quicker. I limited the time to 60 minutes, though I probably would have done another pass to solidify the tuning for a private client - maybe 15 more minutes.

The Verituner has a particular problem/feature - the tuning calculation adjusts as more information is gathered. Great for the best fine tuning, but not so good if the tuning is changing while you are progressing through the first pass! Those of you using Tunelab, SAT or RCT wouldn't need to follow the first part of my process - that's to allow the Verituner a better chance at getting the first pass calculation close to a fine tuning level.

I do suggest using the process in the video "matching the box to the piano" - pretuning the "A"s using your machine's calculation to make sure the chosen stretch is appropriate for the particular piano. Once the "best" stretch is chosen, use the overpull option with your machine and start from A0 and go all the way to the top.

Ron Koval
Chicagoland

After many years of doing pitch raises by ear and then switching to RCT's feature for this I learned a few other things. I don't bother with setting the pin to much other than coming back sharp of target to get the backstring equalized in tension. Its just much faster and requires only a hard blow once above target to facilitate this. This forces me to tune every string on fine pitch even if its on target because I know its not stable. There aren't enough notes that come out good on a pitch raise to warrant the effort and time to set them all solid during the first pass for me. The pitch raise feature does work well enough with tweaking to eliminate extra passes and that's what I got it for.

I always schedule 2 hours and most time I'm done in 1 1/2, give or take. This really depends on the piano. A piano that is tuned regularly takes less time, a piano that has been neglected takes longer. My personal Yamaha takes under an hour. I've had to spend 3 hours on one piano once as the pins slipped with every blink of the eye, not much a tuner can do. I'm always amazed how some people spend LOTS of money on a piano, yet they think $85 for a tuning at least once/year is too much money to have it done regularly. I guess it's the mentality similar to just throwing your clothes away when they're dirty and buying new instead of having to spend the money on detergent... hmmm.

I have had some customers say the last tuner they had went really fast but was not happy with the tuning. There's no shortcut to a quality tuning. I take whatever time is necessary - my reputation is on the line.

Not everything in this life is a race. Let the people who think that life is a race get to the end ahead of you.

There is a difference between setting pitches and tuning. Tuning requires listening to how intervals sound together. That takes time, even if you use a device and the device does the listening.

Factory foremen of old observed that the experienced tuners who did the quickest work also did the most stable work and was still noticed before we lost all our factories.

A framework left out of balance for a length of time, such as will happen if I took a break when I had only raised the pitch of half the piano, will take on a 'set' that will detract from the stability of the finished product as it loses this 'set' over time after the tuning. Is this is an argument for putting the new tensions on the piano as quickly as possible?.

I remember reading somewhere that putting the tension on a piano starting at the lowest string and progressing to the top note by note is safer for the piano and more stable. An argument for using a thoughtfully set up ETD for the initial pitch raise?. An indispensble tool, how did I ever manage all those years without one?

At the same time, while the friction and consequently the heat generated by rapidly drawing the string through bearing points will be dissipated by the time the fine tuning is started, Too much backwards and forwards on each string when setting the pin during fine tuning will create appreciable heat that will be enough to prevent a stable finished tuning. The ability to speedily slot each string in solidly with minimal movement is an advantage for stability and this also happens to be faster.

A few weeks ago, I enjoyed pitch raising a 100 year old 7'Broadwood grand with original stringing and oblong pins. I have not had occasion to give this much thought for a long time, but even after over 100 years of being tuned, no doubt 4 time year in the earliest part of its life, the heads of the pins were still perfectly in line for the most part and each pin presented the long side of its head at the most comfortable angle for a righthanded tuner using a T-hammer with the slot lined up with the handle. (The implement of preference on this type of piano until not that long ago, but that's another thread,) This ability to accurately move from pin to pin contributes to ease of tuning enormously, Thanks to that long gone experienced stringer in 1898. Having the slot line up squarely with the handle still helps with modern pins if the stringing is done well. Modern levers with screw on tips make this something to be aware of.

Just a few ideas towards working efficiently and not inconveniencing our clients by taking longer than necessary.

Wow! I hadn't ever considered this, but it would explain why some unisons can be extra trouble. Thanks!