string cleaning

[Brian Trout]

Hi John,

Just a thought or two...

Sometimes you can get some sounds of the kind you describe from various
places.  If the strings are not level / the hammer is not fit to the strings
(the hammer comes up and hits one string slightly before another), you can
get a weird sound.  If the bridge notching is not very well done, you can
get some false string type sounds.  (I'm not sure what a loose bridge pin
sounds like?)  If the hammer is too hard, as in too much lacquer..., that
can create a whole miriad of unnatural type sounds.  We have a S&S D in our
store that I've put new hammers on twice.  The artists keep wanting it
brighter and brighter, until we finally have so much hammer hardener in the
hammers that it just goes "tink, tink, tink" up the scale.  I hate doing
that to a piano.  But when those hammers get loaded up with that stuff,
there gets to be an awful lot of noise, and some of the wwwwaaaaahhhh that
you refer to, too.  I would guess that you could get some of the sounds you
referred to (or worse) from poor termination points.  A number of uprights
don't have enough of an angle to the string at the upper termination point,
and you get some false string type effects there.  (My speculation,  I'm
open to suggestion.)  Perhaps even the possible variation in actual string
speaking length from one string of a unison to another could cause the upper
partials not to line up. ?  And the last one I can think of, and it may or
may not be valid, is the possibility of some other string, either a speaking
length or a duplex, vibrating in sympathy, which may be slightly out of tune
with the string you're playing.  (Good grief... now we could even be talking
dampers...)

Forgive me if my thoughts wander a bit... it's been a lllloooonnnngggg day.

It's a good question.  I look forward to other responses as well.

Take care,

Brian Trout
Quarryville, Pa.

-----Original Message-----
From: John M. Formsma <jformsma@dixie-net.com>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 10:58 PM
Subject: RE: string cleaning


>Thanks to all who responded about the "string cleaning" question.  There
>were a number of good suggestions.
>
>One of the reasons that I asked about string cleaning was the possibility
>that it might cause a very slight difference in the upper partials of the
>unisons.  I am somewhat thinking out loud, but is it possible that rust on
>various places on a string might cause that one string to be a little
>"heavier" than the others, thereby not allowing some of the upper partials
>to line up properly together?  I have noticed that in certain pianos, some
>of the unisons have a very slow waaaaah sound.  It is not really a beat,
but
>just some noise that I could not tune out.  To describe it, it was as if
the
>first several lower partials were in tune, but there was some additional
>noise that I could not identify.  Now, it might be that my tuning skills
are
>not where they should be, but I was wondering if some of that might be
>caused by rust or other junk on the string.  Could that affect the partials
>in this way?  When this has been the case, I have noticed some rust on the
>strings.  The rust was in spots rather than over all the string.
>
>If this "noise" is not due to something on the string, to what can it be
>attributed?
>
>Wondering...
>
>John Formsma
>
>
>