You know, that room does indeed have gigantic humidity swings. I have waited too long a couple of times in the early summer and it was easily 100 cents sharp. It has a closed bottom, so I can't put a DC in it. Unfortunately, it's the best location for the instrument...it's also a pipe organ room and very small recital room. If this is the cause, I don't think rescaling or restringing the whole thing is really going to help. Careful monitoring more often after school's out in May could be the best fix. Of course, the remaining strings that haven't yet broken will probably continue to break over time. Good food for thought! Paul From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 01/05/2011 10:57 AM Subject: Re: [CAUT] scaling a Tyre harpsichord? On Jan 5, 2011, at 9:33 AM, Paul T Williams wrote: Just a thought, but perhaps the pins on the nut are a little rusty and are not allowing the wire to render? But there again, I would think that the wire would then break at the pin, or am I not thinking in the right direction? Actually it would still break at the pin, when tuning. The friction would cause a build up of tension in the segment between nut and pin. Another thought is that the wire was over stretched by one or more humidity incidents, causing pitch to go way high (100 cents is common for harpsichords with a 50% or more rise in RH), weakening it and making it more prone to break. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110105/92717ca8/attachment.htm>
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