?extra concert maintance&string?

[JIMRPT@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 6/10/1999 4:14:28 PM, Richard wrote:

<<"I am curious Jim, did you do any maintainance to the de-Capo bar and / or
agraffes as part of the restringing ?">>

 Richard;
  As I was/am thouroughly familiar with this particular piano I knew that 
there were no significant problems with the agrafffes, so no, I did not do 
anything special except give them a more than 'cursory' examination and clean 
them (holes) with a brass brush. (very little wear at all and no elongation 
of the holes was evident and as such was/is reflected by the ease of tuning 
and the clean clear tone from each individual string, bass and tenor)  Also, 
time was a factor in starting and completing the job as we had essentially 24 
working hours to do it in. If it had been in my shop instead of on the 
stage?? I don't know that I would have done it differently given the piano 
and familiarity....but one never know do one? :-)

<<"Also I had a guy once tell me that it was a good idea to re-pin the bridge 
from
time to time. His point was that bridge pins also develop flat spots and 
knicks
that influence tone and clarity. Anyone out there heard about this ?">>

  I am kinda of the school of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" train of 
thought. And although there were several "problem" notes, notably a 'D' in 
the tenor and a 'C', in the top tenor, which both proved to be loose pins in 
the 'back' of the bridge, there were no discernable problems, flat spots on 
pins, cracks, etc. on either bridge.

(side bar note: while inspecting pins I noticed there is a "step" down on the 
tenor bridge back where the wire changes from #20 to #21, the "step down" is 
aprox. the same depth as normal bridge cap. I have strung many 'D's and I 
swear I don't recall ever seeing this "step down" before...is this a 
feature/characteristic of Hamburg 'D's or am I just missing 
something........like memory? :)

 As for the capos, again I did nothing except clean up some burrs, these 
probably happened during broken string replacement., other than that nothing 
but running some carbide paper over them to clean them up. Both capo sections 
were in excellent shape, very little in the way of grooves........if I didn't 
know better I would say that Hamburg uses a harder pig iron for their plates 
than New York :-)
Jim Bryant (FL)