loose pin & dead bass questions...

[John Ross]

Hi Stephen,
With no supplies, for the loosish pin, remove the pin, and put in a sleeve,
cut out from some sandpaper. Insert it in the hole, grit side to the wood.
That will make the pin tighter.
If the pin is holding, but just looser, leave it alone.
I am quite concerned, about the space of 1" to 1 1/2" behind the pinblock.
This could be pinblock separation, and is a disaster, waiting to happen. In
my startout years, I had a plate break from just such a situation.
If this is a correct assumption, I would lower the pitch, immediately. Until
the pinblock can be clamped, and epoxies together with bolts completely
through to the back.
Regards,
John M. Ross
jrpiano@win.eastlink.ca
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Airy" <stephen_airy@yahoo.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 4:14 PM
Subject: loose pin & dead bass questions...


> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm still in VA.  I just tuned a friend's piano today.
>  It's a Gulbransen Console serial #600252, approx
> 40-42" tall.  The piano was 50 cents flat, so I took 2
> passes, overpulling it to about 15-20 cents sharp on
> the first pass, then fine tuning it on the second
> pass.  Here's the loose pin question:  The right
> tuning pin on high A (A-7 / A-85) was quite loose.  It
> wouldn't necessarily pop out as soon as I let go, but
> it was way looser than the rest of the pins in the
> piano, like with the same effort that I would get a
> normal pin in the piano to change 20 cents, this pin
> would change a major third or so.  What do you do
> about this situation?  I don't have any spare pins or
> pin tightener or anything like that with me.  Oh, one
> other thing -- when I opened the lid on the
> Gulbransen, I noticed (I think that's the pinblock on
> top cause I saw a few layers of wood that were
> different colors near the tuning pins) that there are
> a couple cracks in the middle of the top of the
> pinblock, and a quite wide one (big enough to stick a
> thin bass string through) at the treble end toward the
> back.  They were a good inch and a half to two inches
> behind the laminations.  Is this anything to be
> concerned about, or do pinblock cracks only affect
> tuning stability when they're closer to the pins