String breakage in Seiler pianos

Piannaman@aol.com Piannaman@aol.com
Fri, 27 May 2005 02:48:07 EDT


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HI Barbara,
 
I've worked on a 240 in recent times, but it is no more than 4-5 years  old.  
No string breakage as of yet.  Lots of frontscale noise,  though.  It's a 
fine line between softening it enough and killing it on  those pianos.  
 
I tune many Seilers, and many have had a wide variety of small problems,  but 
never anything like you describe.  I'd say try Seiler tech support, but  
there really isn't any in the US at the moment that I know of.  I've been  
frustrated by this in working with customers with legitimate warranty  issues.
 
Keep us posted.  If my 240 starts breaking strings, I'll let you  know...
 
Dave Stahl
 
In a message dated 5/26/05 3:20:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time,  
piano57@flash.net writes:

Hi all,
 
Just wondering if anybody out there can tell me  anything about Seiler 
pianos, specifically, the 8' grand, model 240(?) made 13  or 14 years ago.  I 
serviced one when it was new for a few years until I  moved away.  I remember having 
to stay on top of the voicing to keep  it from getting ugly (and to keep the 
front duplex from sizzling), but what I  remember most of all was the time I 
was tuning and a bass string broke,  FLEW OUT of the piano across the room and 
hit an armoire.   Whew!   On another visit, a treble wire broke while I was  
tuning.  So, in 3 or 4 years 2 strings broke.   Then I moved  away.  For a long 
time, I wondered if somehow I could have had my tuning  hammer on the wrong 
pin when that bass string gave way.   :-0
 
10 years later, the customer finds out I'm back  in the area and contacts me 
(that was nice).  I guess the string breakage  problem got pretty bad and 
perhaps the tech that followed me, didn't voice  much, if at all.  I imagine the 
piano could have gotten ugly fairly  quickly between not voicing and having 
strings replaced here and  there.  It turns out that the piano has been restrung 
and some  action work was done by an expert from out of town.  :-)    I 
contacted the tech who did the work and asked if the piano had been  rescaled, he 
said no.  So, I guess I could be looking at the same  problems all over again.
 
Here's the question:  Are these pianos prone  to string breakage?  Is there 
something about the scale?   The piano is played a lot, and I *could* be 
mistaken, but I don't think the  problem is player abuse.
 
Any comments?
 
Thanks,
 
Barbara Richmond, RPT
 



 

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