Dear Arthur, Les & list, I always give a disclaimer before proceeding as to string breakage. When a string breaks at the tuning pin on lesser quality instruments or ones who haven't been tuned in over 2 or 3 years I find that it is better to try using the old wire first because if successful the tuning on that particular note is generally much more stable. If it is a customer with a finer quality piano and I know they fully understand the situation then I prefer to replace the wire, scheduling another service call in a month or so. As to the string stretchers I have found that it is a good tool for re-stringing but it tends to throw the surrounding notes slightly out of tune. I just make sure I get a good becket and nice tight coils. No matter what I've tried I still have to come back at a later date to touch up or re-tune. I have tried leaving the note a little sharp to allow for stretching but I and my customers prefer it to be in tune when I leave. And either way you still have to come back and tweak it. Regards, Greg Torres Les Smith wrote: > On Fri, 20 Feb 1998 PDtek@aol.com wrote: > > > > > While we are on the subject, I would be curious to know what others do with a > > broken plain wire, reuse the wire or replace it? Do you charge for return > > trips to retune the string? Mute it till next tuning? How about bass strings? > > Do you use universal bass strings and on what quality of piano? > > On the subject of plain wire replacements, I have a question I don't think > I've seen addressed before. The problem, of course. is that the new wire > is rapidly going to stretch out and go flat, which is really going to be a > bummer if the note in question happens to be in the middle of the keyboard > where it's played all the time. Tuning it sharp and muting it until the > next tuning is certainly a possibility, but the note is really going to > sound weak if only one string of a three sring unison is left sounding. > My question is: How effective are those wheel-type string-stretchers and > is there anyone out there using them with any regularity in situations > like this? Thanks. > > Les Smith
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