Broken string repair

[Farrell]

Sorry, Hazen, no words of wisdom from me, just a related question!

I serviced an Aeolian spinet yesterday: 7 bass strings and two treble strings. The treble strings were both right at the last treble damper - so like E6 or so. This puts the hitch pins a few inches above the bottom of the wippens and the bridge pins smack dab in the middle of the action (height-wise). I used the approach that I was much too talented a piano technician that I needed to remove the action just to replace two treble strings (although I have used that approach in the past). After about 45 minutes of struggling and cussing (quietly) I finally got them both in place, but it was no simple feat getting the strings through the bridge pins, etc.

How do other folks approach this task? Remove action? Use really nifty techniques that Terry Farrell has no clue of? Scrunch and cuss (quietly)? 

Thanks.

Terry Farrell

P.S. I'm going to visit my girlfriend with the tuning complaint on her Whitney spinet this morning.
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <HazenBannister@cs.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 9:55 PM
Subject: Broken string repair


> List,
>   I had a string break yesterday on a spinet,during a pitch raise.It was the 
> last wound string on the treble side.I spliced the string with no problem,and 
> could not get it under the pressure bar,without it going under the felt.I 
> twisted,bent,tried different angles,everything with no luck.So I cut the 
> felt,pulled the wire on top,and pushed the felt back together,and pulled it 
> up to pitch.Does anyone have a trick for this problem?
> Thanks in advance,
> Hazen Bannister  
>