Tuning stability

[Jeff Stickney]

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David and All,
    Thank you all for your replies.  I have come to the conclusion that,
although I could jump into the restringing and make it work, I would
have to do it for less money than it's worth (including full regulation
and voicing - in two days+??).  I would also, given the amount of money
left in my budget for the year, have to eat a lot of the
tunings/touch-ups over the next week or two.  
    David, you ask some good questions.  I would like to think that
doing the work, assuming it is successful, would help me make the point
that the pianos are generating complaints, and we have the technology to
solve the problems - we just lack the budget.  Richard Davenport was
here some 10 years ago to work on the then-new Yamaha CFIII (which no
one likes to play - they prefer a worn out Steinway - aaargh) and at
that time suggested that new bass strings were needed on the Steinway.
It would be the right thing to restring the whole piano (and replace
action parts) - but I saw an opportunity to put my finger in the hole
and solve the worse problems I'm experiencing in the treble.  I've come
to the conclusion that the timing and the money aren't right to do even
that right now.  I will do the regulation and voicing and whatever else
I can think of to reduce unwanted noise, but that's about it.  I put CPL
on the felt and bearing points before my last tuning, and hopefully that
might help with rendering/stability.
    But today, I have a full day of tuning outside of the U - real
money.  Thanks again - I'll be interested to hear others replies to your
questions, David.
 
Jeff Stickney, RPT 
University of Montana 
jpstickney@montanadsl.net 

    

-----Original Message-----
From: David Skolnik [mailto:davidskolnik@optonline.net] 
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:52 PM
To: jpstickney@montanadsl.net; College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: Tuning stability


So, Jeff...

I guess the answer is "NO".  

At 09:46 AM 3/25/2004 -0700, Jeff Stickney wrote:



 Short of restringing, is there anything I can do to help this
situation? 


The various responses were exhaustively illuminating, and worthy of
implementing, BUT...

As you pointed out, you are in a contract situation, with little money
provided for anything other than tuning.  So here are some questions,
for you and the other contributors:

How many hours would it take to do most of what has been suggested,
including all the follow-up stabilizing?  Otto alluded to this.

How would you propose to bill for the work?  I know Marc Cramer
suggested one approach to appealing for the authorization, but this
would seem to preclude doing the more extensive job, on a close to
thirty year old piano.  This doesn't seem a wise move to me.

How does your success or failure in this effort affect your longer range
goals?  In other words, does success do anything to convince them of the
need for increased resources? Does your super-human effort make you a
hero, or simply set an unreasonable baseline for future expectations?
The discussion reminded me of the thread a few years ago regarding
tuning speed. Just because some of us appeared to be able to perform
seemingly remarkable feats of speed and stamina, didn't, IMO, justify
establishing such as benchmarks.  

Some technical questions:

Jeff, you never replied regarding the downbearing measurements.  While I
expect that the range of suggested cures would induce an improvement in
performance, even with a bearing problem, I wonder if the consensus
would be to carry out such measures, or to wait until the larger problem
could be addressed.

Fred and Marc..can you tell me what is accomplished by sanding (or
planing) out the string grooves?  As much as we are cautioned about
"over tapping" the strings to the bridge, it seems it would be a lot
easier to do serious damage in the groove-removal effort.  Likewise,
unless the bridge edge has been mangled, what would be the purpose of
renotching?



David Skolnik



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