Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum is it true?

Today I read this :
Do you think this is going to happen?
I took it from here:
http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book.php5?page=sect_01_04_06_04

There are pianos 100 years old that are being restored. The money is not going to be spent to make all pianos self tuning. The heated of the wire trick by electricity has it's flaws too. Would you rather pay extra for the self tuning capabilities and still have to pay a technician to service and upgrade that system or hire a tuner every 6 months. The cost would appear to work out the same.
I don't see it happening yet. It would seem that it would be applied to guitars first. There are far less strings involved.

If you read through the site, I think it becomes clear that this is the opinion of one individual as opposed to the consensus of a group. It doesn't mean he's wrong, but it also does not make for a guaranteed outcome.

My 2¢

Don Gilmore has come up with a device that can be added during the manufacturing process to make the piano 'self tuning'

He is a member here, and goes by the name eromolignod

QRS music was going to manufacture this into their pianos, but haven't. It's been several years now, and none of these devices have been manufactured into their pianos, save I believe one prototype which Mr Gilmore owns.

More recently, he claims to have been very close with another manufacture to striking a deal, yet later expressed some frustration with them as well.

Techs have been talking (or worrying) about this for decades. Can a machine be invented that knows how to effectively:

1. Set the pitch,
2. Set the strings,
3. Set the pins,
4. Tell when certain pins cannot be set properly and adjust technique accordingly, and
5. Employ technique to minimize string breakage?

What am I forgetting? Oh well. I just do not think that you can take the piano tuner/tech out of the equation and maintain good, stable tuning quality.

Unfortunately, some (perhaps many) piano owners do not know when a piano is really in tune and holding its tune. So such a machine, if developed, would still find its niche in the market whether it works properly or not. Consequently, tuning market share could drop.

However, I do agree with Keith that if such becomes available, a new opportunity will have been created, and the consumer will still pay the tech for some manner of related services.

It's not a threat to tuners. If you want to own such piano, how much would you be paying for it? Only a very small percentage of piano buyers will be able to afford it. The rest will go traditional.

JUNMER

Good point, junmer. It'll cost a bundle.

The price is not the point.
Because the same happened with the record players, the TV, the computers , the internet etc… First they were expensive then the price dropped and they became affordable.
I think the problem is somewhere else.
The people are not conscious enough about the need of tuning,
The programs in the music schools, the music teachers, the music books, the whole music education has to point the need of maintaining the piano regularly (like people maintain their cars, their houses, their …wives…) and the importance of the well tuned (regulated, voiced etc.) piano for the performer (sound, touch.) and the enjoinment of the music.
People treat the piano like a sofa…. The piano is something special, it brings you to another world, it adds magic to the everyday life.
And the tuning (the tuner) is part of this magic

Hi guys:

I'm Don Gilmore, the inventor of the self-tuning piano. I guess I should update everyone on how it is going.

I had a contract with QRS/Story & Clark to develop and build the STP for several years. They basically sat on the technology and never developed it, ostensibly due to other projects and cash flow, and their contract has now expired. I also spent a year fooling around with Steinway, Petrof and Estonia, who, as with other manufacturers, want desperately to eat the pie, but don't want to help bake it.

So I have decided to take my final royalty payment from QRS and apply it to literally designing and building the production prototype myself (part of my final royalty was to give me a S&C Prelude grand which will be converted). Now that the ball is finally in my court, I have made leaps and bounds in the design and construction.

I have integrated all the electronics to a single, small circuit board that controls everything. This board is being soldered up right now and I expect it this week. I have coils coming for all the sustainer modules and will test them this week too. Hopefully by next week I'll be ready to re-string and get the whole thing going at once and start work trying to minimize the tuning time. Accuracy is not a concern as it is ungodly already.

I have decided that it would be a good idea to include all the bells and whistles in the prototype. It will have an LCD readout that allows the pianist to choose a temperament as well as a scale center (A440, A442, etc.). It will also have the option of allowing a field tuning where a technician can flip a switch (actually a key switch), tune the piano, then flip the switch back...the piano will now repeat this new tuning. Of course it will also have a "factory tuning", which is an actual manual tuning done at the factory and stored (in this case by my personal tech here in town). I may even include a remote control fob (which is easy to add), to appeal to the "gimmick" crowd.

There have been many improvements since it was originally publicized in the NY Times, NPR Radio, etc. I can't tell you all the new and different features until I apply for my second patent, but I will try to answer any questions you might have about the system. I hope to have it ready to show by the end of the summer and I'll be sure to post videos at that time.

Don A. Gilmore
Kansas City

What do you do to spread this? (it's related to my post above- the need of regular piano mentenance)
How do you "educate" the piano owners?

Don Gilmore, thank you for your updating!
Will be there some job for the tuners while people will use your pianos?

Hi Margarita:

New pianos are being manufactured at a rate now of about a million a year or so. They can last for over a hundred years. That gives you an idea of how many pianos are out there already. I would be tickled to death to put my system into even 1% of those new pianos. That gives you an idea of how long it would be until all pianos have the system (in other words: never).

The system itself will also require adjustment and service from time to time, just like any other device...and guess who's probably going to be doing the service!

Don
Kansas City

Since you have made the piano fully computerized, will it be the computer technicians who will do the regular service?

We only have tuning hammers & mutes.

JUNMER

Actually I have tried as much as possible to make sure that it is tech-friendly. I realize that most techs are more of a craftsman than a computer-geek. I myself am a mechanical engineer by trade, so I too am resistant to nerd-oriented electronic gadgetry. I'm for keeping things simple.

For the most part I have made most components easily adjustable and/or replaceable.

If a sustainer isn't working, for example, it is simple to adjust it with a screwdriver. If it is faulty or damaged, then it can be removed and unplugged with a single screw and a new one plugged in. The adjustment is simple and mechanical and is similar to the adjustments that a tech already performs on the action parts.

There really isn't much to it. Though the LCD readout may seem high-tech, all you're really doing is picking a set of numbers that the system uses to tune by, as previously stored from an actual tuning. The tuning is produced by passing electricity through the string. You either have juice or you don't, so it should be relatively easy to troubleshoot.

All the system really is, is a device to record tunings and play them back.

Don
Kansas City

Thanks, Don, for this info. Sounds fascinating. Look forward to seeing the real thing in action one day.

Eromlignod:

How does this device set the pins, and how does it exert sufficient force to turn them? Also if we're talking about newer pianos the pitch drop over a short time is substantial. How does electricity raise the pitch enough to be up to 440 etc. B

I read about this somewhere a while ago, some magazine or other I think - it`s exciting to have the inventor here!

your idea is ingenious - how do you stop the temperature in the cabinet creeping up really high?

Hi Ben:

It doesn't. The pins don't even come into play. There are no moving parts to this system and the pins are never turned, or even touched.

A small amount of electrical current is passed through the string. The string is made of steel, which has resistance, so it will get warm if current is passed through it. When steel gets warm, it expands. When a string expands, its tension decreases. Lower tension means lower pitch.

The piano is tuned by hand at the factory while the strings are warm. So in the field, they can be warmed even more, or allowed to cool, to tune the string. So, you can see, actually the piano is sharp when the system is switched off. So you are flattening the strings to pitch when it is on.

The temperatures involved are only about body temperature or so.

Don
Kansas City

Hi Will:

I'll try to answer your question without getting too arcane in my details.

Each string must be maintained at a specific temperature to remain perfectly in tune. This means that heat is added (by electrical current) to the string at a rate that equalizes how much heat it is losing by naturally trying to cool to room temperature. So if its surroundings are cold, it takes more current to maintain it at temperature. Likewise, a higher ambient temperature requires less current. It's true that an ordinary heating element will get hotter if confined, but in our case, the element temperature is being thermostatically controlled, so string temperature is maintained regardless of conditions.

The string is constantly being maintained at a temperature *greater* than its surroundings. So the temperature of the surrounding air must always be less than that of the warmest string, which is limited to a safe range.

I hope I answered your question.

Don
Kansas City

I guess people who do like to get arcane in the details can read the patent .