Tightening coils on sloppy restringing

[Ron Nossaman]

At 07:12 PM 5/2/99 EDT, you wrote:
>I am not advocating, or defending a sloppy stringing job, but here's 
>something I want to throw out of disucssion. 
>
>I was told once that the way a string is coiled around a pin has no effect on 
>the tuning stability of that string. This does NOT include a loose becket, or 
>untight coil. I am talking about wires that cross over each other. Anideas on 
>this?
>
>The other aspect of this post is the coils against the plate. Again, it is 
>not a good way to do it, but what is the effect of a coil down on a the plate?
>
>Wim
>
>



Interesting stuff,

As to whether or not any of us "advocate" sloppy stringing practices, let's
look at as what we "find" in pianos instead of what we "produce". That
should keep the disclaimers to a minimum so we can talk about the subject
matter. 

I don't see why a sloppy coil with a tight becket wouldn't be as stable as a
coil that was agreed on by a committee of experts as being perfect.
Overriding coils would, as pointed out, effectively increase the diameter of
the tuning pin and make the tuning process touchier (increased breakage
probability isn't the issue here), but I don't see why it would be unstable
in the long term. The same should hold for "loose" coils, since they're
tight around the pin, if not touching each other. I've tuned a lot of them
that did just fine, though they looked bad. 

Strings riding the plate shouldn't cause any big instability problem either
except, possibly, where the bottom of the coil is actually below the plate
level and the string is clamped between the coil and the plate, around a
tight curve at the edge of the plate hole. Again, that seems like it would
present more immediate tuning problems than long term instability.

I've tuned a lot of pianos with varying degrees of these described
conditions and haven't been able to put them together with any dependable
cause and effect relationship to tuning instability. It sure isn't much fun
to tune stuff like this though.

The worst problem that I find along these lines is when strings snake back
and forth between too close rows of tuning pins. I find these things very
difficult to stabilize and they too often move on me after I think I'm
finished with them.

For what it's worth,
 Ron