down to the wire

[John Delacour]

At 11:13 -0400 23/10/07, A440A at aol.com wrote:

>...What strikes me is that the plain wire on these pianos is 
>superior to  what is being used today.  That it is, for all 
>purposes, unbreakable, and  produces such a  consistantly nice 
>musical tone, baffles me.  How could steel making  not be better 
>today than it was during World War I ?
>       I service quite a few modern pianos in heavy use.  They break 
>strings  and they have an enormously larger number of false beats. 
>While bridge  notching and pinning and Capo bar condition are each a 
>large factor in this, the wire itself creates the quality of the 
>note.   I have had metallurgists tell me that the contamination of 
>metals is a problem everywhere, as recycled metals get mixed, to a 
>degree, and purity is expensive. And most of the steel in this 
>country is made from recycling scrap.  But music wire???
>      Anybody privy to the standards for metal used as music wire today?

This topic has come up several times on the list in my time, and at 
least twice I've given the results (from Dolge's book) of the tests 
on Poehlmann wire conducted at exhibitions from about 1867 to 1895 
showing the terrific strength Poehlmann achieved.  Not only was the 
wire stronger but it was far better polished and far less prone to 
rust than any modern wire I have come across.  The colour was also 
different.  I don't know what effect the addition of recycled steel 
to the mix makes -- I can't see that it would do any harm if the 
steel added was of the correct quality to begin with, and I suppose 
that's the big question.  I think there are probably still good 
special steels for specific engineering uses, and probably steels 
that were not available 100 years ago, but by and large my experience 
is that modern steel is rubbish.  I have tools from the 18th and 19th 
centuries that almost refuse to rust, and if you force them to rust 
they can still be just gently rubbed over with steel wool to come up 
birght again.  As to piano wire, who cares?!  I have complained so 
many times to suppliers and direct to Messrs Roslau and seen little 
improvement over the years.  A few years ago I talked to Webster and 
Horsfall, makers of the original patented wire, about producing wire 
to the old Poehlmann specs, and I'm thinking of approaching them 
again.

There are wires made with a better polish than R. and some of them 
are usable, but they all go rusty, whereas Poehlmann wire in a good 
environment rusts with great difficulty and very superficially.

As a bass string maker I know of noone among my competitors who is 
satisfied with the quality of the wire from the main maker.  We all 
want something better, but it would take a lot of time and expense to 
achieve it, presuming that it is possible.

JD