ZEBRA STRINGS

[Clyde Hollinger]

Tom,

I noticed the same thing on several occasions.  Most of the wound strings
would look good, but there would be a few with considerably more tarnish.
In the two-string-per-key section usually both strings were tarnished.
Definitely not mice, and by all appearances the strings hadn't been touched
or changed since the piano left the factory.

I have no answer for this phenomenon, but I assumed that in the factory
perhaps the strings came from two different suppliers and they used some of
each, and some were better than others.

Regards,
Clyde Hollinger

Tom Robinson wrote:

> Today I performed a pitch raise on a 20 year old Hallet & Davis
> console.  According to the owner, it had not been touched since it was
> delivered new.  Tuning pin torque was pretty uniform throughout.
> Several of the monochord strings were very noticeably dead sounding and
> displayed a uniform tarnish.  However, about half of them had no
> noticeable tarnish and sounded very good (i.e.  A0, A#0, and B0 looked
> like new strings except for being dusty, whereas C1 was very dead and
> tarnished).  There was no particular pattern to this problem.  In the
> bichord section, the strings looked fairly uniform and none was
> remarkably dead sounding.   I was assured by the owner that it had never
> had any strings replaced and he had bought the instrument new.  I
> detected no rust on the strings, v-bar, pressure bar, or any exposed
> steel surfaces.
> In my limited experience, I have not seen a situation like this.  I own
> a 50 year old piano with new looking and bright sounding original bass
> strings, and I've seen lots of 15 to 100 year olds with uniformly dead
> and tarnished wound strings (the norm for this area), but never
> this......
> Is this a case of "bad" strings (i.e. metallurgical inconsistency)?
>
> Tom Robinson
> East Tennessee - Land of oppor-tune-ity (if you like 75 year old
> "upright grands")