Yesterday I tuned a concert Kawai for the third year running - so it's an instrument with which I've had familiarity over time.
I don't know what pitch I tuned it to last year but this year I found it at 436 so I took it up to 438. Unlike former years when I hadn't put it in the category of "difficult" or "uncooperative" instrument there were many tuning pins that were so rock solid they were difficult to rotate, with full force. Rather than rotating my tuning lever would have been moving the pin in the wood, despite my best efforts on tuning lever technique to balance that vertical force, and certainly a T hammer would not have moved them at all. I was reminded of that rather unfortunate guarantee controversy we read about on this forum here where a DIY amateur tuner had had troubles with pins breaking, and started to have sympathy. Perhaps I thought I might be the next victim of tight and breaking pin syndrome to the extent that actually I was rather worried.
Mentioning this to an experienced pianist this morning he asked me where the piano was and whether it was too dry. He said that low humidity caused instruments to go flat . . . and can low humidity cause wrest pins to lock up in such a way?
As a footnote rather than substance of this post, continued tuning and playing with the instrument tuned to a harmonic related unequal temperament has caused this instrument to be transformed from having been very hard and harsh now to be palpably sweeter, increasingly so year by year.
Best wishes
David P
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David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
Curator and House Tuner - Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex UK
antespam@gmail.comSeminar 6th May 2019 -
http://hammerwood.mistral.co.uk/tuning-seminar.pdf "The Importance of Tuning for Better Performance"
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