Warbling piano wire

[Michael Jorgensen]

Hi Bill,
     All defective wire I've encountered has been with one size or one string,
not a whole piano.  I just tuned a Mason and Risch console with horrible false
beats in the treble.  Some bridge pins were driven in off the edge of the
highest part of the bridge.  The entire treble had agraffs instead of  pressure
bars located between the V-bar and the tuning pins.  What benefit(s) to that
design?
-Mike Jorgensen

BSimon999@AOL.COM wrote:

> Today I tuned (with a 75cts PR) a Julius Bauer console that had the most
> interesting, and lousy, strings of any piano I have ever tuned.
>
> 95% of the plain strings had a very fast false beat, giving each individual
> string an annoying fast vibrato that muddied the tone produced. The SAT had
> no trouble keying on the right partial, and the unisons would drop in and go
> beatless as usual, but each string would sit there and warble like a bird. A
> beatless unison sounded like three drunk birds, very far away, were trying to
> harmonize with it. I will swear it wasn't the effect of a partial, or
> voicing.  The vibrato was apparent even when the string was plucked (at
> different points) and when I stuck a soft temperment strip between it and the
> hammer.  The hammers are more dead than alive, the piano has no power at all.
>  About one string in every octave sounded out clear as a bell. Go figure.
>
> I figured it was caused by some defect in the wire, but this effect was new
> to me, and I ain't new.  Has anyone else ever had something like this? I
> would welcome any explanations or suggestions on what to try when I return to
> it.
>
> Time constraints precluded me from a microscopic examination of the bridge (
> or seating the strings on the bridge)  but the v-bar looked all right.  I do
> expect to see this piano again, as the owner was absolutely delighted with
> the tuning to A440.  After all, it was the FIRST tuning since he bought it
> 10? years ago.  (  Tuned,  it sounded awful. )
>
> ( They said it was 12 years old, but I could find no serial numbers and the
> Atlas only lists up to 1938 anyway. It looks like an Aeolian, but was
> presumably made by Wurlitzer.)
>
> Thank you for any input,
>
> Bill Simon
> Phoenix