Thanks Isaac
I agree with what you say about depressing the pedal before inserting the strip, and I always do this, and you are right to remind of this on the forum.
Yes, you may see it as a shimming method. This is why impacting is such an excellent technique.
With regards to impact methods, impact is impact, is impact is impact.
Depending on how far an interval is out, the impacting will be greater or lesser in intensity.
I understand that one may use the impact method as a final technique after slow pulling, but it is not slow pulling. It is impact. Others, though I cannot speak for them as such, may use this technique right from the start/out of the box, as I do. It is impacting! Yes or No?
Regards,
Thank your Mark, yes I mean we can call that (small) impacting.
As you may know it will only work at the moment the pin is stressed enough, is makes the same a slow pull but fast, so before using it I want to be sure of the posture of the pin.
There is a small leeway in pin's posture, adding more or less strenght in the NSL, but I feel about an "optimum setting" and once that one is installed, I try not to disturb it.
I do so by keeping contact with the bottom of the pin at all times. You may have seen in the video I posted lately, that I use a slow pull for a small motion of the pin. I say then that I know the pin have moved but I am unsure how much.
If I would have used the small impacts "shimming" method I would have been more certain (even if in the demonstration I had judged correctly how much to overload)
What is not very good for the block, tending to ovalize the upper part of the hole, is to use impact with a too pronounced waving motion, particularly if the pin is manipulated with some pressure toward the tail of the grand to have some reserve of tension to add in the NSL at the end.
Tuning regularely that way (without using much the strenght of the torqued pin) is something pianos do not like if repeated again and again, I can witness that.
On the opposite light "impacts" ("ticks" ) on a pin that is torqued a little on itself, does not change the tightness.
I can use a very tight pin, impact it lightly, and find the pin in the same exact torque.
In all those techniques, the most important one is to know how to evaluate the NSL higher tension band and how the pin is keeping that tension in place.
When I simply put my lever on a new pin, I know immediately, by the way the pin is reactive , if I need to make some tuning manipulations before really tuning. Even the tone of the tip engaging on the tuning pin is particular. The correctly tense pin is very reactive and tight at the same time.
Lowering (unloading") the pin is then not necessary, and the string can be directly tuned in fine adjustments mode.
(It can be by "jumps" or by "massage")
It is however sometime necessary to really unload and do the whole raise in torque from scratch, hopefully, not so often.
Impact is nice in the sense it allow the whole NSL and speaking length to move as a whole. If one is used to the slow pull tightness sensations he can recognize that soon in impacting.
But the control on pin posture is less precise in many blocks.
I like impacting for raising pitch if there is a lot of friction and I would need a lot of over pulling before the string moves. In that case I would not impact above pitch, but generally low of it and hopefully the wire have lost some friction and can be manipulated more easily then.
ON most pianos it is possible to raise and get in the ballpark of the wanted pitch, then cheat a little on pin torque or posture to get stability.
I try to work just a hair more precisely, considering the whole ensemble NSL pin and pinblock as active elements that need to produce opposite forces.
AT phase level, I believe that phase orientation can be manipulated without moving the bottom of the pin, most of the time, as we are helped by the process at work for that. Better go in definitive location immediately if possible, hence the interest of having a sort of mental map of the unison tuned.
Best regards