Screw stringers

[Bill Ballard]

On Fri, 17 Apr, "Richard Moody" <remoody@easnet.net> wrote:
>I  heard that proposition, about the same time ago.  Yes the screw
>stringers seemed to be more stable in tuning, but I can't believe a
>company would bank their sales on what tuners would do  (not do if you
>think about it) than what customers might want to buy because it needed
>less tuning.

Actually, not what "tuners would do" but had been doing for the first
decade (or however many years the screwstringer design persisted), namely
expressing their skepticism about this new, metal-based system.

>Yes the screw stringers seemed to be more stable in tuning,

That's assumes two things.

a.) Any piano is going to warp slightly in the hours following a fresh
tuning simply due to the elastic materials involved quietly restoring
themselves.  These include soundboard spruce, steel wire & tuning pins,
maple fiber at the surfaces of the tuning pin hole, wooden backframe, you
name it, anything getting deformed by the changing string tension load.
I'll agree that this sttleing down is imaginable by us tuners and even
measurable by engineers. I'll I'll also agree that the direct coupling
offered by the screw-stringer device would eliminate at least what could be
blamed on a steel tuning pin twisting in a maple block. But I won't be such
a pushover on the second assumption.

b.) The improved stability to be noticed in the screw-stringer model has
any significance or value at all in the larger picture of a tuning
constantly in motion due to the vicissitudes of temperature and RH.
Remember the screw-stringer is only saving us that error in tuning
occurring because twisting pins manage to relive themselves and alter the
tension differential across at least two friction barriers enough that wire
will move across the final barrier into the speaking length. What's
required to make this error saved a noticeable one is 1.) tight tuning pins
in the case of the piano with the wooden block and/or 2.) how far the piano
is out of tune (IOW, how much a tuning will rearrange the tension load.

It would seem to me that we should narrow the error-saving (or if you
prefer, stability in tuning) down to that produced by a steel pin in maple,
further yet only to the extent of tension change required to put things in
tune. Unfortunately, the majority of what pushes a tuning around is outside
of this, and operating on all pianos, screw-stringer equipped or not.

It took Steinway twenty years to back out of the teflon action center. Who
has the figures on M&H's affair with the screw-stringer. Count your beans,
move 'em into a single pile. I thnk the screw-stringer was oversold

Bill Ballard, RPT
New Hampshire Chapter, PTG

"I gotta go ta woik...."
Ian Shoales, Duck's Breath M. Theater