Replacing plain wire

[David M. Porritt]

Steve:

Do you think the low end of the plain wire section on small consoles
could be helped by using this stainless steel wire?  The scale
tensions in that area give such a funky sound.  Is that the kind of
sound you got from that one unison of modern wire?  I'd think barbed
wire could be better than much of what I hear on these undersized
PSOs.  :-)

dave

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/10/01 at 10:04 AM S. Brady wrote:

>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


_____________________________
David M. Porritt
dporritt@mail.smu.edu
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_____________________________