Making a piano tuning lever

[geoff]

You do realise how much force these strings are under

So you did consider even tempered tuning then

[geoff]

No, I didn't say that, it was the OP

[Matty F]

No he did not. See this:

contrary to the commonly held belief, this method [equal temperament] was not the one for which Bach composed his The Well- Tempered Clavier.

[Matty F]

Yes, I'd need a little gearbox for each motor. A bit too expensive for me.

No, I would have a row of buttons to select the key, and the strings would be tuned perfectly to Pythagorean intervals for that key.

[John Williamson]

And you'd get complaints from most modern listeners, who are used to equal tempered tuning, and the correct tuning now sounds "off" to their ears.

Just saying, like...

[Andrew Gabriel]

Do make sure someone has a video camera rolling...

[Nick Odell]

Sounds like a d-i-y challenge!

Something like this perhaps?

[Jon Fairbairn]

You wouldn?t need to do the whole thing with gearboxes. Just have the motors drive the far end of longish levers, the other ends of which press against the non-playing part of the strings (or, if you don?t mind modifying the piano further, have the levers move the anchor point of the strings).

[geoff]

In message , Leon Franks writes

Sorry, that's just not true and a really good tuner will tune the slight difference differently depending on the intended use of the piano

Apart from the fact that I don't think I'd use an electronic tuner, it makes the basic mistake of wanting to tune to concert pitch. A lot of old pianos have "sagged", and, unless there is a requirement to tune to concert (which can cause a significant increase in overall tension on the frame,), tuners will usually tune to the average tune of the instrument. My piano is, for example just under a quarter of a tone down, I've thought about bringing it up to pitch, but it would take about a year to settle down. There are other points to consider, such as strings breaking after 100 years of being laid back

[geoff]

In message , charles writes

I didn't actually get that far, I could tell without having seen that

[Matty F]

When I've finished a project I like to move on to another different one. I like to challenge the orthodox ways that things are done. I often meet people who have all the qualifications and experience of an expert, but lack knowledge of physics or maths and sometimes I can do better than them. I'm talking of piano tuners here. "Reasonable men adjust themselves to their environment. Unreasonable men attempt to change their environment to suit themselves. Therefore, all progress is the work of unreasonable men"

Now that you point it out, yes it was witty.

This is the way I intend tuning my piano:

[Frank Erskine]

of you or me

8-)

[Matty F]

You didn't look at that video. I concede that I will not be making the

5ths perfect. But it won't be equal temperament.

Trevor Stephenson demonstrates how to tune 18th-century Well Temperament:

[charles]

The tuner, I have one for my harp, can be adjusted to give a different reference frequency for A. All the other notes then follow. So if you want A=400Hz instead of 440Hz, you can have it.

That's fine if you are playing on your own, unhelpful if someoen else is playing, or singing, withn you

[geoff]

In message , charles writes

Singing?

You are joking aren't you

Stringed instruments (guitars, violins etc) are a damn sight easier to tune than pianos, most other instruments also have a small degree of tunability

Helpful or unhelpful, the fact remains that most household pianos will be tuned the average, NOT to concert pitch. Don't argue, because its true

Lets face it, nobody here is going to be tuning a concert grand for Ling Ling

[Matty F]

OK, problem solved. I didn't need a crane. Since I intend to recondition the piano completely, I simply unscrewed about 50 wood screws and removed everything but the strings and outside casing. That made it light enough for two people to carry up two flights of stteps. I attached two pieces of wood to make it easy to hold. Here's the piano ready to carry.

piano is now inside my house ready to refurbish and put back together. And tune, when I have made my tuning spanner!

[geoff]

I knew that

[Frank Erskine]

,

Yonks ago I stripped down a Waddington pianoforte belonging to my granny and recovered hundreds (or so it seemed) of sort of button-head iron screws about 3/4" x 8, I still have quite a few in my bitsa box. I can't remember what I did with the rest of the instrument.

I do remember that there were four fluted brown glass castor-cups to stop the carpet being crushed too much.

[Matty F]

McAfee must be wrong. Millions of people use tinypic

tested this site and didn't find any significant problems.

[Matty F]

On the other hand, in the newsgroups Google intercepts the link. Maybe Google has a problem.