Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum How do "YOU" set the strings....

We all want our tuning to stay for an extended period of time and of course we work at "setting" the strings to do this. What do you do to keep the strings you have just tuned so they hold the setting you have given them. What is your method of doing this?

It is a matter of developing the proper touch or feel.

I manipulate the lever to a point of equilibrium with the string vibrating but cannot describe how. It is a feel thing. Kind of like a snaking wiggle inwards until it feels stable. If you end up by pushing the string out with only a slight pressure in either direction then you know it is not set with stability.

I used to visualize the old analog signal strength meter on the stereo amplifier, the one with the little needle that went back and forth. You had to listen to the signal, watch the meter, go back and forth with the dial getting down to a smaller and smaller span till you found the "sweet spot" (which wasnt always right in the middle). You kind of do the same thing with the pin/string assembly.

Pwg

Greetings.

I practiced this approach on pitch raises, and found that eventually, a single downward motion can be refined, like a golfer refining his swing. speed and consistency improved. On pitch raises, no string gets moved more than once, as the average is more important than any individual string's exact pitch, and time is money.

I push the pin to lower the tension from a pitch slightly higher than I am aiming for, perhaps 4-8 cents higher to start. As I do this, I listen to the pitch fall and depending on the torque and flex of the pin, I aim for a spot that will be on pitch while I have the hammer moving the pin. Releasing the hammer allows the pin to "unwind" and flex backwards in whatever amount the pin was loaded with as I pushed it flat. If I get it right, the final pitch can be raised by a slight upwards lift on the hammer while on the pin, but will not move flat without flexing the pin to the max before it begins moving in the block.

The keeping the pin in motion to its final position gets me over a lot of jumpy pins, as I will start from far away and be moving the whole time. They are still a hassle, but not as much as jerking back and forth while hoping it will land somewhere I trust. It also makes unisons easier to tune, since I listen as the pitch of the second string falls closer to pure, and then finally, I can hear that purity evaporate as the pitch goes just slightly under it. this is on the order of .3 cents, at most. If I have flexed the pin perfectly, when I hear the "evaporation", I can release the hammer and hear the pitch come up that small amount.

Neither of these techniques use "test" blows to move the string around. A FFF is always given before moving on, but I will quote Jack Sprinkle, who, in 1978, gave the old school dictum, "A note that can be banged into tune can be banged out of tune". Bill Garlick would carefully listen and manipulate his hammer, then when at the proper place, give it a pretty solid whack. I follow that. Many of the pianos I tune this way I tuned 3-5 times a week, (stages), and 2-3 times a week (studios). I never saw evidence that the blocks suffered for the slight, intentional, flag-poling, that I employ as a way of maneuvering tension around friction.
Regards,

I pay attention to the distinctive tic that I feel when the pin moves in the block.
Sometimes - tic, tic, tic with no change in pitch then tic and big change in pitch requiring compensation.
Other times - tic and pitch changes slightly every time.
Then there are some where I can’t feel the tic.
Others where one tic gets a big pitch change.
So many different scenarios and all must be analyzed and dealt with.
If I can’t feel the tic it’s much more difficult to do a stable tuning.
After I’m comfortable with pitch and pin position I give slight hammer pressure to the flat side combined with one or more test blows.
Before I tune I like to check pitch and listen.
Then hold sustain pedal and do the forearm smash and let all 88 notes sustain.
This gets everything moving and can unseat some friction issues that don’t happen with test blows.
Then I recheck pitch and listen again.
This tells me much about what I’m up against.
After tuning I do the same forearm smash. This tells me if I didn’t set any pins correctly.
I like to keep track of temperatures and relative humidity.
Changing conditions can affect the tuning while I’m tuning. Ever finish a tuning only to discover it drifted slightly sharp?
Even on a relatively stable performance piano that is kept in tune I usually do two passes to be certain the tuning will not move during performance.

My overall MO is 95% in line with what Ed F. wrote. A variation on the "test blow" is to use more of the hand to hit 3-5 notes at once. The idea here is that less force is needed as it is spread out over several notes...gets the bridge moving better than concentrating on just the one note. Easier on the hand, easier on the ears.

"Grief shared is grief halved".

Pwg

Just another comment on what I do: I try not to bring the pitch too far under or over. If bringing up I try to go straight from where it is to where it should be without first dropping, and without going wildly over.

To add to the above descriptions: The first thing you need to know when you go to tune a string is whether it is presently in a stable state. If it is not, you will have more of a guessing game to determine how far to turn the pin in the block before you try to "settle" the string in tune.

When you go to turn a pin there are two types of flexing actions; flexing across the pin and torsional flexing. You must keep track of how much of both types of pin flexing is occurring and make sure as you get the string tuned that the flexing is removed.

I believe there is some very slight permanent torsional bending that tuners do when setting the string and this is stable. If you try to permanently bend the pin to curve it along its length, you will damage the pinblock and stable setting will not be as easy to achieve because the deformed block will creep back slower than the pin flex rate and change the pitch.

I'm very slowly driving up a handle to 12 o'clock always. Let my tuning reach a long time but I have believes that keeping of a stability of a pitch is good credo for it's.

Hi Max. I wish I had a translator because I'm sure you have some interesting and helpful points of view but as it is I can't get a word of English from your video instruction. Sometimes there's a translation tab but I see none on this. Take care, Duane.

thank, Duane
here a professional girl translator from English tried to explain AS it's work, only the sound is quiet. I explain for use a T-bar wrench , however for a traditional L tuning hammer, this works as well. My method is that ALL manipulations (routes) of a hammer handle are required to be only on the left side of the dial from to up (9 hour to 12) only. Ideal need do it's very near to 12
why? Thus, when the handle of tuning hammer moves in this direction up, we completely turn off the string pressure (-) for a pin. A pin drive has in axis movement only in the hole and in a bush. We preserve the resource wooden part of the pin block and this operation gives reason to believe that a pitch will be more long-term, I believe.
Max,

Pitch Raise:
1 or 2 taps sharp to pitch, 1 tap slightly sharper to about my 1/3 target point, and 1 gentle pull to settle... By my 1/3 target point, meaning, if piano is -30, will take it about 8 cents sharp- and it will settle back to just under pitch (I usually under calculate my stretch slightly, as I don't like having the mid-section end up settling sharp of 440-- prefer it 1 or 2 cents flat when I go to tune it)... Try never to take my stretch more than 15 cents sharp of A440 in pitch raising--- would rather do a double. And ALWAYS back off on pitch as a first motion on the oldies.

On less than 20 cents distance- will usually simply take 1 tap and 1 pull to settle.
After 20 years of doing this, you get a feel for how much of a tap you need.
And Ed's right-- its a futile waste of effort to try to make a pitch raise (or lowering) sound good- that is not the goal.

But, more in answer to the actual question of what you do in setting strings to achieve stability:
The less you move the string back and forth the better your stability will be...shoot for 2 or 3 movements at most to the set point (get it down to where you don't overshoot or over-settle and have to go sharp/flat again). If you are going back and forth, over-shooting, over correcting, you'll never get it stable.
Less motions, the happier the piano. And the closer you get the thing to A440 on your pitch stabilizations, the easier it'll let you do just this at fine tuning time.

By the way- guess I should have pointed this out- all of this is in the tapping method/impact method...... I rarely find the need to do the slow-pull/push method on pitch raises or tuning (other than on most extreme cases of stubborn pins).


Edit: the, "1 gentle pull" is for uprights to settle.... of course for a grand I am pushing.

In the end, balance is the key...balancing of all the forces involved.

Pwg