Chickering concert grand, scale 131

[John Ross]

Possibly these strings are past their 'best before date'. Especially, if 
it is that old, and they haven't broken previously.
So why not just replace them, with a rescaled set, without any changes.
What are you hoping to gain, with your intended change.
John M. Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada.
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cy Shuster" <cy at shusterpiano.com>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 10:47 PM
Subject: Chickering concert grand, scale 131


>A fellow technician has a client here in Boston with an old Chickering 
>concert grand that is a real string-breaker in the bass, typically 
>right in front of the tuning pin.
>
> It's S/N 5014, marked on the strut and on other case parts (1840?!?! 
> Or 1905, if 105014?), eight foot something, with "Scale 131" cast into 
> the plate, and a small "D" in the plate at the tail.  It has 8 
> monochords, 11 bichords, and 9 wound trichords on a transition bridge 
> connected to the bass bridge with a slat of wood that doesn't touch 
> the soundboard.  The action brackets are wood; it seems you take off 
> each rail to get the top action off.  The hammers are narrow, around 
> 8-9 mm, and are in excellent shape; they appear newer than their 
> shanks.  Brass flanges with a mysterious hole between CP and drop 
> screw.  Plastic keytops that the sharps bury into.  Nice red mahogany, 
> as seen on the fallboard; the rest is alligatored and dark. Some 
> cracks in the soundboard, but all the ribs are tight.  The bridges are 
> screwed on from below.  A few cracks at the base of bridge pins in the 
> bass, but they're pretty far apart.  3/0 tuning pins are on the loose 
> side, but no visible pinblock problems (screws go up into it from the 
> action cavity, as well as down from the top).
>
> The problem with bass string breakage seems to be twofold: a humidity 
> problem in the basement (rust on the tuning pins) and a severe 
> deflection angle on the 8 monochords.  It's perhaps 5" from pin to 
> agraffe, but the pin is a good 1 1/4" higher than the speaking string 
> height.  There's a 1" wide plate mound in this section that deflects 
> the string at maybe 40 degrees, roughly.  The understring felt is worn 
> through, but I doubt that alone is the problem (right?).
>
> Current thoughts are to experiment with grinding down that plate mound 
> to see what improvement in deflection angle is possible.  He'd like to 
> replace all the bass strings.  Any suggestions?  Perhaps replacing 
> wound tri's with plain bichords?
>
> --Cy--
> http://shusterpiano.com
>