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Hello:  I am the inventor of the self-tuning piano, Don Gilmore.
I just happened to run across the archives of your discussion group and
thought I would offer to answer any questions that anyone has.  I am
a mechanical engineer by trade and reside in Kansas City, Missouri.

Here is a brief explanation that covers many of the questions I have
read so far:

First of all, the main thrust of the device is _not_ to make the piano
permanently in tune forever.  The system simply provides a piano that
is perfectly in tune on a daily basis.  As a conservatory-trained
pianist of thirty years, I can assure you that such a piano would be
the most welcome improvement to the instrument in some time.

As a pianist, you constantly have to play an instrument that is out of
tune.  This is in contrast to virtually every other musician (they tune
their own instruments).  Any piano player will tell you about the
wonderful feeling it is to sit down and play your freshly-tuned piano
right after the tech leaves the house.  Unfortunately this is a
short-lived happiness as the piano becomes audibly out of tune in a
few days or weeks.  By the time you get it tuned, six months later, it
sounds awful.  You just learn to deal with it.  A piano that can truly
maintain itself in tune on a day-to-day basis brings the pianist up to
the level that other musicians have enjoyed for thousands of years.

Much commentary has been offered concerning the voltage, current and
temperature of the system.  Voltages will vary along the gamut from
0.8 V to 3.0 V (no shock hazard).  Currents are around 2.0 A, and are
pulsed on a varying duty cycle (just as theorized by Mark Kinsler in
this group) to adjust the tuning.  The 95 deg. F. [35 C.] temperature
is an average estimated figure to operate the system at a reasonable
room temperature.

Though 95 degrees may seem like a hot day outside, remember that your
skin is 98.6 deg., so it is barely detectable to the touch.  The keys
in your pocket are hotter than these strings.  There are no metallurgical
or radiative effects at such miniscule temperatures.  Creep, hardening,
austempering, annealing, etc., are all effects that occur at hundreds
or thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

The self-tuning system provides a window of tuning range in which it
can maintain a tuning.  New piano strings will exhibit "stretch" and
pianos will be moved, abused and subjected to harsh environmental
conditions at times.  Sometimes these conditions will alter the
strings' pitch beyond the range of the device.  This is when the piano
will have to be manually re-tuned.  The new tuning will be performed
while the piano is in a pre-warmed "tuning" mode and the new tuning
stored for future duplication on demand.

Let me dispel a few rumors and give you a better idea how the system
will operate.  It does not "listen" all the time; it does not "tune"
all the time; it is not warm and using electricity all the time.
Before you begin playing, you will press a button on the keyslip to
turn on the system.  At this time the strings will warm themselves and
spontaneously sustain themselves, as if drawing a bow across them (this
is done magnetically, also predicted by Mr. Kinsler).

The pickups will listen and the duty cycles will be adjusted until the
strings match their last stored tuning values.  At this time sustaining
stops, "listening" stops and the tuning adjustment process stops.  All
that remains is maintenance of these correct currents in the strings
and the piano remains in tune until you switch it off when you're done
playing.

Note that this tuning is custom for the room conditions at the time you
turned it on.  If you turned it on another day when the humidity was
much higher and there are hot stage lights on it and a big ceiling fan,
the duty cycle values arrived at will be different, but it will be in
tune just the same.  If conditions change drastically for some reason
while you are playing, it will indeed go out of tune, but it would have
gone out of tune on an ordinary piano anyway.  And if you don't like
it, simply switch it off and back on again and you get a new, custom
tuning.

Incidentally, the patent that you have been discussing is for an
entirely different device called the PocketTune [TM].  The patent for
the self-tuner should publish in a couple of months -- it takes forever
to get those damned things through the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office!

Anyway, I welcome any and all comments or questions that any of you
might have about the system and will try to answer all of them.

Don A. Gilmore
Kansas City, MO