Sudden damper buzz syndrome

[WilsonianJ at aol.com]

Dear Geoff,

I have a sneaking suspicion that the dampers are "crusty" and are "sizzling" 
upon contact with the strings.   Your client may have only now noticed after 
listening more intently to your tuning.   I highly doubt that the issue was 
caused by your tuning, but your client may believe differently. The quick fix for 
sizzling dampers is to remove the damper and soften the felt a bit.   It 
doesn't take much so if you very conservatively scratch the surface of the felt, 
you should ameliorate the problem.   Roughing up the felt too much will cause 
leaking dampers. Try it on one or two first to see if that's the problem.   

Good luck, Geoff,

Jim Wilson, RPT
L.A. Chapter



In a message dated 11/18/06 7:34:07 PM, thetuner at ivories52.com writes:


> Greetings all --
>   
>  Last week I tuned a customers Kawai grand piano. The customer was out of 
> town so he left me a key to his studio. He returned the other day and while he 
> is happy with the tuning and the other repair work I completed he mentioned 
> that all the wound strings are now exhibiting a buzz when the damper comes 
> into contact with the played string. Once the damper has completely engaged the 
> buzzing stops and the strings damp correctly. He says it is objectionably 
> noticeable only on the entire wound bass string section of the piano. This is 
> not something that I noticed while I was there so I'm curios as to your 
> thoughts on what could have caused this and what I might be able to do to affect a 
> timely fix. FWIW, he lives a couple of miles from the beach but has a DC 
> de-humidifier installed. The piano also lives in a small, relatively well sealed 
> but otherwise non-climate controlled garage studio.
>   
>  -- Geoff Sykes
>  -- Assoc. Los Angeles.
> 
> 

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