Replacing plain wire

S. Brady sbrady@u.washington.edu
Sat Nov 10 11:07 MST 2001


Ted, Stephen, and list:

I've used this wire on an 1830-something Chickering, and it worked
beautifully. It does have a lower tensile strength than modern wire, but
so did the original wire on these old 19th-cent. instruments. I ran short
and had to string one note with modern wire, and the tone just stuck out
like a sore thumb on that note. The "Pure Sound" wire has a sweet,
gorgeous tonal character, while the note strung in modern wire sounded
hard and clangy. Of course, I immediately ordered more wire to replace the
modern wire. I believe one of the reasons the modern wire sounded so bad
is that it was too far below its breaking point; in other words, it was
too strong for the application.

Steve

On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, Stephen Birkett wrote:

> Ted wrote:
> > I am curious about the stainless steel wire advertized in the Journal. =
> > Has anyone used it? Or intending to? I was taught that the main =
> > objection to it was that its breaking strain was not high enough, but =
> > wonder if the metallergy has improved for this particular make of wire. =
> > If so it would be a true breakthrough.
>
> Haven't tried it, but tensile stength is less than modern steel piano
> wire. It is an alloy comp. chosen to match, with an existing modern
> alloy, reasonably closely the properties of earlier steel wire.
>
>

_________________________________________________

Steve Brady, RPT
Head Piano Technician, University of Washington
Editor Emeritus, Piano Technicians Journal






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