Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

8. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Scott Kerns

Posted 09-28-2015 20:58

You might also console yourself with a thought which often came to me when tuning such pianos in my early years in the business. As I'd struggle with a false bichord in the bass or a totally impossible unison in octave 5, with my relatively benign OCD (so necessary to being a good piano tuner!) driving me back to try it again and again, I would say to myself, "the owners are used to having it sound even worse."

Wise words Susan. I have a customer with a Yamaha GH1 that I tuned today, which has that nasty break between the plain and wound string. I tuned the lowest plain string about 10 cents flat to what TuneLab had calculated because aurally that sounded "least horrible", as you said.

------------------------------
Scott Kerns
"That Tuning Guy"
Lincoln, NE
www.thattuningguy.com
------------------------------

Original Message

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 20:40
From: Susan Kline
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Peter -- these pianos are not located in the Land of Elegant.

You might try setting up a temperament by ear, trying various possibilities, and when you settle on the one which sems to be the least horrible, measure it, and use that for the same model when you encounter it again .... it's in the nature of things that you will encounter it again, like a bad penny.

You might also console yourself with a thought which often came to me when tuning such pianos in my early years in the business. As I'd struggle with a false bichord in the bass or a totally impossible unison in octave 5, with my relatively benign OCD (so necessary to being a good piano tuner!) driving me back to try it again and again, I would say to myself, "the owners are used to having it sound even worse."

------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon

------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 18:13
From: Peter Stevenson
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

A couple weeks ago I had a real eye-opener when I tuned a 1953 Wurlitzer spinet and a 1960 Sherlock-Manning console in the same day. The Wurlitzer had wound strings up to about G#3 with relatively an F reading of about 12 cents for F# and 20+ cents for the first plain-wire string. The
Sherlock-Manning had plain-wire string starting at F3, which gave a reading of 20+ cents. So here were two short pianos, about the same size, but the F reading was dramatically different based entirely on whether F3 happened to be wound or not. I have seen pianos where the F reading has been under 5 cents on wound strings, and over 20 cents on plain wire strings.

I have tried all kinds of things, playing around with the F reading as well as the double-octave beats. I just haven't found anything that is relatively consistent, quick, and elegant. I tried "splitting the difference" with a 1990 Kimball 404P "Prelude", and it seemed to work out pretty well - I'll try playing with that some more.

------------------------------
Peter Stevenson RPT
P.S. Piano Service
Prince George BC
250-562-5358
ps@pspianoservice.com
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 16:45
From: Ruth Zeiner
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Peter,

I measure F3 the usual way, then measure the first plain wire, often G3. Take the

difference and split it. For example, F3 might read 18, and G3 read 10. The difference

is 8, so the number I'd store would be 14. This gets fairly close as a guide.

I think I learned that from Doc, but not positive.

Ruth Zeiner

9. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Susan Kline

Posted 09-28-2015 21:11

Scott, since they will be listening to it aurally, "least horrible aurally" has a certain mad sense to it. We didn't ask them to buy these pianos hardly taller than writing desks, or those "pre-natal" grands.

------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon

------------------------------

Original Message

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 20:58
From: Scott Kerns
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

You might also console yourself with a thought which often came to me when tuning such pianos in my early years in the business. As I'd struggle with a false bichord in the bass or a totally impossible unison in octave 5, with my relatively benign OCD (so necessary to being a good piano tuner!) driving me back to try it again and again, I would say to myself, "the owners are used to having it sound even worse."

Wise words Susan. I have a customer with a Yamaha GH1 that I tuned today, which has that nasty break between the plain and wound string. I tuned the lowest plain string about 10 cents flat to what TuneLab had calculated because aurally that sounded "least horrible", as you said.

------------------------------
Scott Kerns
"That Tuning Guy"
Lincoln, NE
www.thattuningguy.com
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 20:40
From: Susan Kline
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Peter -- these pianos are not located in the Land of Elegant.

You might try setting up a temperament by ear, trying various possibilities, and when you settle on the one which sems to be the least horrible, measure it, and use that for the same model when you encounter it again .... it's in the nature of things that you will encounter it again, like a bad penny.

You might also console yourself with a thought which often came to me when tuning such pianos in my early years in the business. As I'd struggle with a false bichord in the bass or a totally impossible unison in octave 5, with my relatively benign OCD (so necessary to being a good piano tuner!) driving me back to try it again and again, I would say to myself, "the owners are used to having it sound even worse."

------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon

------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 18:13
From: Peter Stevenson
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

A couple weeks ago I had a real eye-opener when I tuned a 1953 Wurlitzer spinet and a 1960 Sherlock-Manning console in the same day. The Wurlitzer had wound strings up to about G#3 with relatively an F reading of about 12 cents for F# and 20+ cents for the first plain-wire string. The
Sherlock-Manning had plain-wire string starting at F3, which gave a reading of 20+ cents. So here were two short pianos, about the same size, but the F reading was dramatically different based entirely on whether F3 happened to be wound or not. I have seen pianos where the F reading has been under 5 cents on wound strings, and over 20 cents on plain wire strings.

I have tried all kinds of things, playing around with the F reading as well as the double-octave beats. I just haven't found anything that is relatively consistent, quick, and elegant. I tried "splitting the difference" with a 1990 Kimball 404P "Prelude", and it seemed to work out pretty well - I'll try playing with that some more.

------------------------------
Peter Stevenson RPT
P.S. Piano Service
Prince George BC
250-562-5358
ps@pspianoservice.com
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-28-2015 16:45
From: Ruth Zeiner
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Peter,

I measure F3 the usual way, then measure the first plain wire, often G3. Take the

difference and split it. For example, F3 might read 18, and G3 read 10. The difference

is 8, so the number I'd store would be 14. This gets fairly close as a guide.

I think I learned that from Doc, but not positive.

Ruth Zeiner

11. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Ryan Sowers

Posted 09-30-2015 02:29

Fred said:

I devised a method, which you can read about in the file I linked to, essentially flatting the lowest plain wires and sharping the highest wrapped, to create a compromise. Was it worthwhile? I'm not sure. It's not that I could do better aurally, either. Inharmonic jumps create havoc.

When I was learning how to tune in the early 1990's nobody seemed to talk about how these jumps in inharmonicity at the break affected the beat speeds of intervals. I think Dan Levitan was the first presentation I saw at a PTG convention where this was addressed. The concept that intervals had their own inharmonicity helped explain what I was experiencing. Then I understood why the thirds slow down so much when you approach the lowest tenor strings and why they suddenly start to speed up again when the lower note of the third crosses onto the wrapped strings.

I think the compromise that Fred is (sort of) suggesting is what I find the most musically acceptable. Keep the octave as wide as you can possibly stand in order to keep the thirds as wide as possible. This also keeps the 5ths sounding more acceptable (the discrepancy between the 3:2 an the 6:4 is big in this area - the 3:2 may even be a little wide in order to keep the 6:4 from howling too much.)

Once you cross over to the wound strings keep the stretch reigned in as much as possible to allow the smoothest blend possible. I actually have come to enjoy working through these compromises. It really forces you to listen and problem solve. Some of the little Kimball Spinets have three wire changes in the temperament area, first to plain wire bichords and then to wrapped bichords. Each change has a curious effect on the beat rates. However if you understand the effects of the scaling on the inharmonicity it allows you to better predict what is happening and understand how to control things in order to find the best solution.

------------------------------
Ryan Sowers
Olympia WA
360-705-4160
------------------------------

-------------------------------------------

12. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Ron Bergeron

Posted 09-30-2015 08:12

First, remember that this is an imperfect piano. Second, there is a workaround for this problem in your Accutuner instruction book. It was written by Jim Coleman Sr. His explanation in the text is better than the one below, but for those who may not have access to it, here it is: Basically the technique uses two pages of memory. The first page is your regular F-A-C tuning. This you use on all plain wires. The second page is created by reading the inharmonicity of the first wound string -- E3 in this scenario). You memorize the stretch number as an F6 number (since SAT won't let you do anything else).

Now use the second page of memory for all wound strings and the first page for all plain strings. If you want to sweeten it a little, use your aural tuning skills to even out the fourths and fifths as you descend, adjust the Double Octave beat rate on your SAT every M3 or so, and keep going. Remember that the final product will be BETTER, but only as perfect as the piano's scaling will allow.

------------------------------
Ron Bergeron
Austin, Texas
------------------------------

13. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Fred Sturm

Posted 09-30-2015 11:03

Yes, the two page method is what was printed in the SAT manual. However, if you actually compare the numbers in the two tunings, you find that it does nothing to address the problem (see the file I linked to for more details). The "F number" for the top wrapped string will give you a better bass tuning, and it will give as near to precisely the same tuning from F3 up as not to be worth bothering over (tenths of a cent difference here and there). So there is really no point to having two pages, simply calculate the tuning for the wrapped string inharmonicity.

Smoothing out the break requires some other finagling. RCT and especially Verituner fooled with this a lot, so if the break is an issue for you and you want to tune electronically, those are probably the ways to go.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------

Original Message

14. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Paul Klaus

Posted 09-30-2015 11:11

------------------------------
Attention to contiguous minor 3rds helps me in this area.
------------------------------

Original Message

Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2015 11:02
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Yes, the two page method is what was printed in the SAT manual. However, if you actually compare the numbers in the two tunings, you find that it does nothing to address the problem (see the file I linked to for more details). The "F number" for the top wrapped string will give you a better bass tuning, and it will give as near to precisely the same tuning from F3 up as not to be worth bothering over (tenths of a cent difference here and there). So there is really no point to having two pages, simply calculate the tuning for the wrapped string inharmonicity.

Smoothing out the break requires some other finagling. RCT and especially Verituner fooled with this a lot, so if the break is an issue for you and you want to tune electronically, those are probably the ways to go.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2015 08:11
From: Ron Bergeron
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

First, remember that this is an imperfect piano. Second, there is a workaround for this problem in your Accutuner instruction book. It was written by Jim Coleman Sr. His explanation in the text is better than the one below, but for those who may not have access to it, here it is: Basically the technique uses two pages of memory. The first page is your regular F-A-C tuning. This you use on all plain wires. The second page is created by reading the inharmonicity of the first wound string -- E3 in this scenario). You memorize the stretch number as an F6 number (since SAT won't let you do anything else).

Now use the second page of memory for all wound strings and the first page for all plain strings. If you want to sweeten it a little, use your aural tuning skills to even out the fourths and fifths as you descend, adjust the Double Octave beat rate on your SAT every M3 or so, and keep going. Remember that the final product will be BETTER, but only as perfect as the piano's scaling will allow.

------------------------------
Ron Bergeron
Austin, Texas
------------------------------

15. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Fred Sturm

Posted 09-30-2015 12:12

Ryan,

Tuning aurally, my solution was to devise a temperament that spanned the break, C#3 to F4. Since you now have contiguous M3s C#3F3, F3A3, A3C#4, C#4F4 (and F4A4), you can lay a template by fooling with them, shifting the C#s and the Fs to make things work. In general, when C#3 is wrapped and F3 is plain, that means F3A3 will tend to "want to be" the same speed as C#3F3, so rather than try for a 4:5 beat rate ratio, you just make sure C#3F3 is slower than F3A3. Some of that is done by adjusting octave size, making F3F4 wider, C#3C#4 narrower.

With that template in place, it isn't too hard to fit everything else to it. The real problem lies in using an F3F4 temperament, getting it nice, and then starting to do octaves down, and finding out that nothing wants to work.

You're right, nobody really wrote much about that. Those who wrote tended to concentrate on large, even instruments, picking nits on them, and then saying of the small instruments, "You just do the best you can." It sure would have helped to have some guidance, rather than working it out individually. The lightbulb went off for me in going back and forth from the Steinway D to the Hamilton studio, and finally realizing that the F3A3 M3 needed to be slower on the Hamilton, faster on the D. I had "intuitively" thought it would be the opposite, and nobody had ever said different, or said anything for that matter.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------

Original Message

Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2015 02:29
From: Ryan Sowers
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Fred said:

I devised a method, which you can read about in the file I linked to, essentially flatting the lowest plain wires and sharping the highest wrapped, to create a compromise. Was it worthwhile? I'm not sure. It's not that I could do better aurally, either. Inharmonic jumps create havoc.

When I was learning how to tune in the early 1990's nobody seemed to talk about how these jumps in inharmonicity at the break affected the beat speeds of intervals. I think Dan Levitan was the first presentation I saw at a PTG convention where this was addressed. The concept that intervals had their own inharmonicity helped explain what I was experiencing. Then I understood why the thirds slow down so much when you approach the lowest tenor strings and why they suddenly start to speed up again when the lower note of the third crosses onto the wrapped strings.

I think the compromise that Fred is (sort of) suggesting is what I find the most musically acceptable. Keep the octave as wide as you can possibly stand in order to keep the thirds as wide as possible. This also keeps the 5ths sounding more acceptable (the discrepancy between the 3:2 an the 6:4 is big in this area - the 3:2 may even be a little wide in order to keep the 6:4 from howling too much.)

Once you cross over to the wound strings keep the stretch reigned in as much as possible to allow the smoothest blend possible. I actually have come to enjoy working through these compromises. It really forces you to listen and problem solve. Some of the little Kimball Spinets have three wire changes in the temperament area, first to plain wire bichords and then to wrapped bichords. Each change has a curious effect on the beat rates. However if you understand the effects of the scaling on the inharmonicity it allows you to better predict what is happening and understand how to control things in order to find the best solution.

------------------------------
Ryan Sowers
Olympia WA
360-705-4160
------------------------------

-------------------------------------------

16. RE: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Recommend

Registered Piano Technician

Peter Stevenson

Posted 10-04-2015 12:49

Thank you all so much for your input. Right after Fred's first post, I tuned a 44" Yamaha that had an F reading of 10.4. Because it was greater than 10, I looked at the reading of E3, which was the highest wound string. It was 4.4. Comparing the two FAC programs, the 4.4 program was noticeably better than the 10.4 program. Very interesting!

------------------------------
Peter Stevenson RPT
P.S. Piano Service
Prince George BC
250-562-5358
ps@pspianoservice.com
------------------------------

Original Message

Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2015 12:11
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Ryan,

Tuning aurally, my solution was to devise a temperament that spanned the break, C#3 to F4. Since you now have contiguous M3s C#3F3, F3A3, A3C#4, C#4F4 (and F4A4), you can lay a template by fooling with them, shifting the C#s and the Fs to make things work. In general, when C#3 is wrapped and F3 is plain, that means F3A3 will tend to "want to be" the same speed as C#3F3, so rather than try for a 4:5 beat rate ratio, you just make sure C#3F3 is slower than F3A3. Some of that is done by adjusting octave size, making F3F4 wider, C#3C#4 narrower.

With that template in place, it isn't too hard to fit everything else to it. The real problem lies in using an F3F4 temperament, getting it nice, and then starting to do octaves down, and finding out that nothing wants to work.

You're right, nobody really wrote much about that. Those who wrote tended to concentrate on large, even instruments, picking nits on them, and then saying of the small instruments, "You just do the best you can." It sure would have helped to have some guidance, rather than working it out individually. The lightbulb went off for me in going back and forth from the Steinway D to the Hamilton studio, and finally realizing that the F3A3 M3 needed to be slower on the Hamilton, faster on the D. I had "intuitively" thought it would be the opposite, and nobody had ever said different, or said anything for that matter.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2015 02:29
From: Ryan Sowers
Subject: Accu-Tuner with wound F strings

Fred said:

I devised a method, which you can read about in the file I linked to, essentially flatting the lowest plain wires and sharping the highest wrapped, to create a compromise. Was it worthwhile? I'm not sure. It's not that I could do better aurally, either. Inharmonic jumps create havoc.

When I was learning how to tune in the early 1990's nobody seemed to talk about how these jumps in inharmonicity at the break affected the beat speeds of intervals. I think Dan Levitan was the first presentation I saw at a PTG convention where this was addressed. The concept that intervals had their own inharmonicity helped explain what I was experiencing. Then I understood why the thirds slow down so much when you approach the lowest tenor strings and why they suddenly start to speed up again when the lower note of the third crosses onto the wrapped strings.

I think the compromise that Fred is (sort of) suggesting is what I find the most musically acceptable. Keep the octave as wide as you can possibly stand in order to keep the thirds as wide as possible. This also keeps the 5ths sounding more acceptable (the discrepancy between the 3:2 an the 6:4 is big in this area - the 3:2 may even be a little wide in order to keep the 6:4 from howling too much.)

Once you cross over to the wound strings keep the stretch reigned in as much as possible to allow the smoothest blend possible. I actually have come to enjoy working through these compromises. It really forces you to listen and problem solve. Some of the little Kimball Spinets have three wire changes in the temperament area, first to plain wire bichords and then to wrapped bichords. Each change has a curious effect on the beat rates. However if you understand the effects of the scaling on the inharmonicity it allows you to better predict what is happening and understand how to control things in order to find the best solution.

------------------------------
Ryan Sowers
Olympia WA
360-705-4160
------------------------------

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