"Loss of Tone" Complaint

[Farrell]

Oh, gee whiz Roger, you wreck everything. I have a great speech I give
clients when talking about cleaning the piano interior. Part of it includes
"we can make the strings look real nice and shiny, but please understand the
results are purely cosmetic." So now I need to find a problem piano and
clean, clean, clean and see what happens. You are wonderful.

I know the exact target - my favorite 1920 Baldwin R. It was restrung about
3 years ago and at that time the treble was REAL clean. The 120 year old
Florida home where it resides has NO air conditioning and as such the
strings have a real nice coating of rust on them already. I just tuned it
last week and told the owner (VERY skilled pianist) that I was surprised to
hear that the treble had so much noise in it - it had been so very clean
before. I even tested a number of bridge pins, fully expecting the false
beat (or more like warbling in this case) to go away - but it appeared that
the bridge pins are fine - no effect when pressing down with brass rod.

Oh boy, oh boy, I'm sooooo excited. I think maybe I'm gonna have a new tool
in my bag of tricks!!!!!   :-)   I'll let you know how it works.

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message -----
From: "jolly roger" <baldyam@sk.sympatico.ca>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 1:02 AM
Subject: Re: "Loss of Tone" Complaint


> Hi Ron,
>              I demonstrate string cleaning in my Prelude to voicing class,
> there is a lot of very suprised faces in the the room. Punch line clean
> strings= clean tone.  It's right up there with loose bridge pins for
> producing unwanted noise,  and power loss.  Well maybe not quite as bad.
<G>
>
> Take a string eraser and sharpen one end to a chisle shape,  use at an
> angle and you can slip between the strings and clean the sides and most of
> the underside.  The blunt end is used to clean the top sides of the
strings.
>
> I think some of the down ward pressure also helps seat the string.  Close
> attention to all the bearing points,  string cleanliness, and hammer
> mating, often saves you from having to do any thing further to the
hammers.
>
> Regards Roger
>
>
> At 11:21 PM 8/30/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >>    Boy, I'm vocal tonight, ain't I?
> >
> >So what's the barometric pressure there?
> >
> >
> >>    I suspect that any tone improvement by removing the strings to clean
> >>under them would be from lowering and bringing the strings back up to
pitch.
> >
> >Huh?
> >
> >Ron N
> >
>