Avery, I'm _very_ glad to chime in on this one. Loudly, at that. First, I must (with no modesty at all) relate that the vast majority of my work over 30 years has been on concert/recording instruments. These beasts have demands placed upon them that few private instruments ever do (the exceptions being obvious). My position on maintenance of these instruments flows from watching many instruments over time, and being called in to do various things on many others. Suggested guidelines include, but are by no means limited to: 1.- Restring the capo sections _at least_ once every two years. (Using existing pins, as possible, doing maintenance on the capo itself, bridges, etc.) 2.- Complete restringing of the instrument every 5-7 years. (Yes, with whatever is needed at that time.) 3.- Damper replacement with complete restringing, or as needed. 4.- When stringing, do not go over 4/0 pins on Ds (period, no negotiation) or 5/0s on Bs (and smaller, depending on condition of the block). 5.- When stringing, look for opportunities to improve tone and response. These might include changing the angle of deflection (I use 1 to 1.5 degress, depending on the condition of the board) through plate placement or shimming/grinding of the aliquots. 6.- Depending on overall use, plan on hammers, shanks and flanges roughly every 7-10 years. There are too many obvious variables to waste errmail space worrying about them here. 7.- ALWAYS keep a VERY sharp eye on the board. I do not keep exhaustive records of this, although they might be helpful in institutional settings. What I do do is to check crown and bearing both before and after restringing operations. These days there are sufficient (and sufficiently competent) rebuilders around to make board/block replacement a viable alternative to replacing an entire instrument. A starting point. (These figures are not entirely arbitrary, they are the ones used for many years by Steinway, London.) Actually, as a fiddle player, your chair should be immediately aware of the problems introduced by old strings. Bye the by, Newton, in another post, talks about using metric wire on Yamahas. I would extend this to trying to identify (whenever reasonably possible) the type of wire used on a given piano. This means, of course, that one winds up with several different types of wire... Avery, this is a starting point. As you are aware, I can go on at great length, and not say much, so for now, I'll just sign off. If you need more ammunition, however... Best and good luck. Horace Horace Greeley hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu LiNCS voice: 415/725-4627 Stanford University fax: 415/725-9942
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