Mason and Hamlin style 5

[kitster@Polarnet.com]

At 02:37 PM 1/17/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Has anyone out there ever tuned a mason and hamlin upright with a unique
>stringing mechanism? <snip>  Any info or history on this? 

I tune one of these quite frequently, a 9 footer in the home of a woman who
does a great deal of entertaining.  Every visiting artist, society event,
etc. makes use of this old Mason & Hamlin screw stringer which still has
great tone and a nice action.  The piano was rebuilt by Edward McMorrow
(author of the book The Educated Piano) about 20 years ago.  He completely
restrung it at that time, a job I can't even imagine doing after having to
replace a single string a year ago...what a job.  In Ed's book on page 57
is a special page on "Tuning the Screw-stringer Grand."  He must have
obtained alot of the material for this article by working on this piano.

Ed's instructions notwithstanding, I find tuning this beast is difficult.
The screwstringer mechanisms are old and can fail.  I always use an
Accutuner for the simple reason that I don't want to go sharp even
accidentally.  I'm lucky...the owners of the piano had some extra parts
machined years ago just in case of failure.

In the mid range just above the bass you will find that the strings touch
where they are looped around the stringing mechanisms. So turning one of
the machines can affect the tuning of the adjacent strings as well.  Some
of the machines are difficult to turn and I have to admit to using a little
WD-40 from time to time on them since there's no pinblock to worry about.
According to Ed "This system tunes with a high frictional lag."  He's
right...I find tuning this piano takes at least twice as long as any other.
 For me it takes about 3 hours.

Kit Cleworth
Fairbanks,  Alaska