strings 'n stuph

[Richard Moody]

> >
> >I came across a piano the other day (an old Strohber upright) that had
> >copper wound in the single and lower half of the double wounds, and iron
> >wound in the upper half of the doubles.  The remaining iron wrapped
> >strings were dead.  I assumed that someone replaced only half the bass
> >strings at one time.  Could that piano have been designed that way?
> >
> >John Voigt
>

> Yes, it could have. Using a less dense wrap than copper lets you use
larger
> diameter wrap (in case the required copper would be too small to wrap
> without great difficulty), to control tension when you can't change
> speaking lengths easily. In practice, you can usually get around the
> problems well enough without resorting to changing wrap material.
>
> Ron N

In older pianos with both iron and copper wrap bass strings a simple test is
to let down the string and pull it back up.  If there is a definite
improvement you can be sure "rolling" the strings or simply letting down
will give good results.  But remember all strings before 1920 are now 80
years old and sooner or later they are expected to "give out".  The client
should be advised that broken strings is their expense unless of course you
make a mistake.
    The tensions of bass strings was hard to calculate and I suspect most
bass scales were simply gotten by trial and error.  If the tension were too
high the the more likely early breakage.  There are a lot of strings from
1910 still going strong.   Then there was that C2 string on a teacher's
piano that broke when I let it down just a little to test the tuning pin
tightness.  They do splice though. ---ric