[CAUT] reverse grip tuning pins

[Jim Busby]

Del,

 

I just got the news about your class in Sacramento and was wondering if
you will be doing this same class anywhere else in the near future? It
happens that I'll be out of the country that day. 

 

Thanks,

Jim Busby

 

________________________________

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Delwin D Fandrich
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 5:27 PM
To: 'College and University Technicians'
Subject: Re: [CAUT] reverse grip tuning pins

 

|
| 100% agreement on not reaming. What are reverse grip pins?
|
| Thanks,
| Jim Busby BYU
|

________________________________


| They're cut thread pins, like Denro. Salesmen who were trying
| to make the other guy's pianos (using these pins) look bad
| would wrap a pin in a silk scarf and show how it would turn
| easily one direction and not in the reverse. The pitch was
| that these evil pins had *teeth* that would tear up the block
| in the competitor's product. The guys who's pianos had these
| pins used the same demo, illustrating how these pins resisted
| turning backward, and would therefore hold a tuning longer
| without "slipping".  Neither happened in actual pianos, of
| course, and the *teeth* were just an incidental artifact of
| the thread cutting. They weren't planned at all, but just
| came with the process.
|
| Is it even possible to buy pressed or rolled thread pins any
| more? The last I saw were from APSCO, I think, long ago.
| Guaranteed to snap and jump in pretty much any block, mic'd
| out of round, tapered, reverse tapered, and an interesting
| variety of diameters in every box. Wonderful things. I think
| maybe Kimball used pressed thread pins too.
|
| In any case, it's cut threads for me.
| Ron N

 

Ron is right about the advantages of cut vs. rolled pins. But not about
the marketing hype. At least as I remember it the claim was made by some
that the cut thread tuning pins helped make the pianos using them stay
in tune longer by not allowing the tuning pin to slip backward which, as
we all know, causes the piano to go out of tune. 

The first time I heard these claims was back while I still worked for
Baldwin (which, by then, was using Nippon Denro cut-thread pins). Some
sales and marketing people were touting the supposed advantages of the
"one-way" feature that was supposed to keep the piano from going out of
tune by locking the pin to the wood and thus not allowing the pin to
turn in the counter-clockwise direction. They were quite unhappy when I
pointed out that if these claims were actually true it really meant that
the tuner was basically destroying the pinblock each time the piano was
tuned. He (or she) did, of course, end up turning the tuning pin both
directions during the process of tuning. As Ron pointed out, none of
this happened in the real world.

Marketing is such a wonderful thing.

Del

Delwin D Fandrich
Piano Design & Manufacturing Consultant
620 South Tower Avenue
Centralia, Washington 98531  USA
Phone  360.736-7563
<mailto:fandrich at pianobuilders.com> 

 

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