We have a lot of experience here at the North Bennet Street School with pianos that are tuned daily! It's really a torture test for tuning pins, pinblock, and action. Grands have what looks like grey iron filings at the base of tuning pins, from pieces having come off them (as well as red dust bunnies on the soundboards from new temperament strips being inserted over and over!). It's really a lot of wear, compared to playing (but perhaps more evenly distributed). Every single key is played multiple times, with force. Action centers get loose; we can't repin everything, or we'd be up to size 26 center pins in no time. Action rails get worn out from hammers and wippens being removed and replaced. Rep springs and backcheck wire get tortured, and of course key height rises inevitably until you can't see balance pins in the keybuttons any more... :-) I don't know how often restringing is necessary (they don't let us touch wound strings for a couple of months :-), but I know it's done a lot, along with new hammers. The school could actually charge manufacturers to torture-test their new action designs. Kawai? Stuart? Anyone? We're non-profit, you know... --Cy Shuster-- N. Bennet St. School www.nbss.org Class of '06 (I don't speak officially for the school; I'm just a student) ----- Original Message ----- From: "timothy ehlen" <tehlen@uiuc.edu> To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 12:32 PM Subject: RE: frequent tuning - floating pitch? was tuning > About my suggestion of pinblock wear, this was the only > possible problem that I could think of with very frequent > tunings, based on the loosness of some pins on concert > grands that I've encountered, including my own CD. I would > assume that a re-stringing would need to be done earlier on > these instruments that have regularly been tuned weekly or > even daily, comparing with the normal grand that gets 2-4 > tunings per year. > > Tim
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC