Tuning stability

[Doug Wood]

I agree with Fred, here. My somewhat limited experience with restringing
concert instruments is that they will be difficult, to put it mildly, for a
while. Not only will the pitch be dropping, but the tuning pins feel like a
brand-new piano (worse: they're less consistent). Tight, and ornery. It is
possible, I think to restring the treble sections (maybe even the whole
piano) and put it on stage the next week, but it will require a lot of
work!!! Better to allow yourself a month or two for it to settle down at
least some.

What I find curious is that this business of the tuning pins being ornery is
almost as bad if I restring with the same pins. (I usually do this unless
I'm restringing the whole piano, or there is some problem with the
pinblock.) It seems that disturbing the pinblock by only 3/4-1 turn is
enough to unsettle them for 4-6 months. !

Doug Wood

On 3/29/04 6:36 AM, "Fred Sturm" <fssturm@unm.edu> wrote:

> Hi Jeff,
> I'd be more than a little hesitant to do a partial restring one week, and
> have the piano in a performance situation the next. If I were you, I'd wait
> until summer. It's possible to get reasonable stability that fast, but not
> at a "concert level," IMO. I've done a complete restring on a concert
> instrument, and had it in performance a month later, and that was awfully
> tight. There were issues, to put it diplomatically. Not fatal, but not
> exactly the sort of thing that burnishes one's reputation.
> I'd also advise replacement of bridge pins, not just CA. The pins
> themselves develop grooves, which generate string noise in various ways.
> And the bridge top itself is fairly likely to have grooves where the
> strings cross, especially if anyone has been tapping down strings over the
> past 30 years. If I am doing as much as restringing and dressing the capo,
> I'd just as soon get all the terminations as close to optimum as possible.
> Meaning pull pins, surface and renotch, replace with new pins - sizing the
> holes. Adds a few more hours, but worth it, IMO.
> To get pitch stability as fast as possible, my own procedure is:
> 1) Get moderate tension on strings
> 2) Clean up coils
> 3) Space strings to hammers (using their current positions as a guide,
> evening out where appropriate) - tension is well below pitch, strings slide
> easily along capo without "planing off" the lubricant I have applied and
> shaving up little bits of buzzing-source metal
> 4) Pull to pitch
> 5) Pull to plus 25 cents
> 6) Work strings back of bridge: massage with brass tool, creating positive
> bends on duplex and against bridge pins.
> 7) Pull to plus 25 cents
> 8) Work strings front of bridge: massage with brass tool where possible,
> string hook where needed, to create positive bends at capo and aliquot humps
> 9) One more tuning at plus 25 cents. Leave for at least a couple days
> 10) Massage strings vigorously. Level strings using string level. Tune to
> pitch. Tune entire piano.
> 
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> University of New Mexico
> 
> --On Saturday, March 27, 2004 12:01 PM -0700 Jeff Stickney
> <jpstickney@montanadsl.net> wrote:
>