Restrung Steinway D stability

[Derek Gibson]

I have just finished a busy few days work on a beautifully rebuilt
Steinway D piano at the Centre of the Arts in Regina, Canada.   It was
rebuilt by Roger Jolly using the new Steinway parts.  It had its debut
yesterday, and there was another concert tonight.  The concerts went
very well, and the piano was enthusiastically received.   The piano was
restrung only two weeks ago.  Guess what the debut piece had to be?  A
technician's nightmare - the Rachmaninoff 3rd. Tonight it was the Rach
2, followed up by an encore performance of the Carmen Variations.
Beautifully done, I have to add, by Canadian pianist Michael Kim.  Logic
would say that stability would be a problem.   However this wasn't the
case.   The piano had only arrived in Regina on Monday.  Thanks to
scheduling conflicts, rehearsals and practice session were held mainly
held in rooms throughout the building.  The piano only had a daily move
of about 1-2 cents in the tenor to middle C section, with the other
sections holding quite well.   The piano had been tuned many times
before it's arrival, then daily, then after each rehearsal and
performance.  This greatly helped stability.  More interesting, and I
think more helpful to the list, is the work on the duplex sections.  The
duplex strings were rubbed  with a hammer shank with moderate
pressure(enough to move the wire down)  When this was done to the rear
duplex, the pitch would drop, and vice versa with the front.   Many
times it was possible to bring the unisons back into tune with work on
the duplex sections.  Who needs a tuning hammer.  Also interesting, was
that this treatment also helped solve many false beat problems.   When
the piano was freshly restrung, the duplexes moved the string in the
neighbourhood of 20-25 cents.  This weekend it was closer to 2-3 cents.
This is a new technique for me.  Again thanks to Roger Jolly.   I am
interested in trying it on an older grand piano.  Maybe it can help
stability there too, and provide another trick to help with false beats.

Thanks for reading,
Derek Gibson