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Gribs

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  1. Unless you have experience or a pro tuner guiding you, it's extremely difficult to tune a piano, as there are many complicated problems. On a guitar, you have six strings to tune, then you're done. You don't have to tune each fret afterwards : all the semi-tones are already ready and in place. On a piano, you have to tune all the semi-tones. And this is the main problem. There are no fixed frets or shortcuts - you have to make sure everything is right. I hire a professional tuner / tech to take care of our piano. It is actually a husband and wife team, and the husband was one of the main people who worked on developing the piano-tuning software that runs on hand-held PDA's. I would never screw around with the internals of the piano. Tuning a guitar is not just about tuning the six strings with the pegs and then you are done. To get things really right you have to adjust the string length for each string. This is hard to accomplish in acoustic guitars, but you do see some acoustic guitars with bridges that have been adjusted slightly so that every two strings have a different length. I don't try to adjust this myself for fixed bridge acoustics. Most electric guitars have string length adjustment screws in the bridge. I use a Peterson virtual strobe tuner to make sure that the harmonics at the twelfth fret are in tune with the played note at the twelfth fret. I used to do this by ear when I was a kid and could not afford a tuner - you can hear it pretty easily in a guitar that is out of intonation seriously. Usually this adjustment needs to be done once for a particular string brand and gauge, but I always check it just in case - sometimes fine adjustments might be needed. For my mandolins, the bridge on each is just piece of wood that sits on the top near the stop that holds the strings. The position of the bridge can be adjusted in both distance from the stop and angle relative to the string direction. I use my Peterson virtual strobe (and ear - lets face it sometimes it is faster to home in by ear) to set the bridge position and angle (making some strings just slightly shorter and some longer) to get the best possible intonation. This is harder to do than the case where each string can have its length adjusted independently, but it is also very easy to hear the difference between "right" or "best possible" intonation (sounds good) and "wrong" intonation (sounds like {censored}).
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