Skipping Strings

[Blaine Hebert]

Samuel et al,

"Skipping" strings is a common enough problem and I have tuned many a piano that I left sounding (to my ear) as bad as I when I arrived thanks to poor rendering past capo bars.  My grandfather used 3 in 1 oil and I tried that for years, finally realizing that it was making the problem worse on most pianos.  My current preferred treatment is the old formula of Liquid 
Wrench.  I have not had good luck with their current formula; I use the material sold in the metal cans as it is an older formula and seems to work better at rendering strings.  The old stuff smells like diesal fuel, the new stuff has a more rank odor.  As a second choice I would only use CLP.

Blaine Hebert


Of Samuel Choy
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 9:39 PM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Re: Tuning a Duo/Art player piano

Hi all,

Well, I tuned the player piano today...sort of. It wasn't that difficult to 
get the necessary parts out of the way. At first I thought that I could tune

around the the mute/rinky tink bar, but that proved very difficult. So I 
eventually removed it.

I set the temperment quickly enough. They told me that it hadn't been tuned 
in five years, so I decided against raising it  to pitch (I told them that I

wasn't and they were fine with that.) But tuning the thing was a major pain.

First of all, there were false beats galore..It almost seemed like there 
were false beats within false beats. Also the pins skipped. No matter who 
carefully I tried to move my tuning hammer, it skipped higher or lower than 
I wanted each time.

Between the pain it was to tune and the time it took me to remove the 
requesite parts to access the tuning pins, it took me almost four hours to 
tune the darn thing. And then it still sounded like cr..p. But I got it 
done.

It was suggested that I charge above my extra fee for the job. 
Unfortunately, that was after I gave them my quote--my regular price less 
10% for being a first time customer. I won't make that mistake next time.

I've got to say, though, that it was a real learning experience. I don't 
think that it would take me as long the next time.

Thanks again for everyone's excellent advice...I used it and it did help me 
a  lot.

Regards,

Sam Choy