At 9:12 AM -0400 5/5/98, Frank Cahill wrote: I tune a Steinway upright ever six months, and it's a tough job. Does >anybody have any ideas why these pianos present such a challenge? >Forget the tight tuning pins, I can handle that. It seems that the >strings have excessive friction at the various contact points. Lubing >strings at v-bar with liquid wrench made very little difference. > >Someone suggested that I flagpole the pins up/down to try to get the >strings settled. Can't say as I find it any easier. Flag-poling the pins, as Ken Sloane watched the oldtimer doing, when he first arrived at Oberlin, has no effect on string friction. It's simply a means of altering tension in the first section just off the tuning pin without turning the pin, (which with stiff pinblock grip is its own can of worms). I can deal with tight pins, What my hammer technique can't deal with is high string friction. No lubricant (snake oil or otherwise) has ever been able to relieve string friction as I perceive it. (That is, the inordinate delay between the feeling of wire changing at the tuning pin and the sound of wire changing at the entrance to the speaking length. I am not shy about letting up a 1/2 turn on the pressure bar screws (with the accompanying rough tunings). DisklaDame has promised to report back to us after the spring tunings on several Steinway verticals, with fresh observations on what it is in her technique that makes her feel comfortable tuning them. I look forward to this, not just for the report on "taming the mule". Any one who knows her also knows of the evolution of her hammer technique. Bill Ballard, RPT New Hampshire Chapter, PTG "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes timeand annoys the pig." Sign on the wall of a college voice teacher's studio.
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