down to the wire

[Erwinspiano at aol.com]

Hi Ed
  Ditto --Dittos-- Dittos.---  I have been of the same opinion  for a very 
long time.  I once owned a 1926 L with original Wire. Even the  bass strings 
were strong & solid & had the very characteristic Steinway  sonority.  I know you 
know what I mean Ed. 
   When I re strung it..... it was a disappointment.   Oddly..it was 
especially the plain wire. I'm sure we could have better  wire than what is currently  
available. Why can't we make a close personal  contact with a  wire maker & 
have some dialogue.  Can I go.   J.D's going with me...right J.D.?
  Any one else?
  Has any one any opinions or experience with Japanese wire? Or   a source.  
I like the Mapes Gold better than the Roslau but I recently had  a piano come 
back from 6 months in the desert near Palm Springs & the new  wire was fairly 
corroded.  The place was near the freeway but is this  common?
Dale Erwin

Greetings, 
I suppose I have been looking around for  some heresy, lately.  The 
temperament cauldron is simmering on a back  burner, periodically boiling 
over in 
harmonic sizzles.  Some of us  just have to tend to it, others ignore it, 
many are 
not even in the  kitchen, but acknowledge the occasinal burst of steam and 
flavors, (along  with the shouting and banging of pots and kettles).
But  that's not what I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to hear what others  
had to say about wire.  Old wire.  Wire that has been played  near the 
extreme 
limits.  I have two examples:
1.   I recently examined a 1917 Steinway M.  Totally alligatored  case.  I 
mean it.  One of the most profound alligatoring I have  ever seen, and very 
few 
dints, anywhere.   Not a single broken  string in it.  It had been in a 
teacher's studio for decades and used  for all day, most every day.  It had 
been 
regulated once in its  lifetime,  hammers had 1 inch long flat spots and  
almost no  
felt covering the underfelt or core.  It played like a truck, and the  sound 
was like listening to rocks swimming in oatmeal.   Wear  and verdegris were 
competing for attention anywhere you  looked.   
The owner is  looking for maximum musical performance, so I 
suggested that she replace  everything in the action, except for the keys, 
key frame, 
and action  rails.  Go all the way from the pedals to the damper heads.  And  
don't touch the stringing. Even with the refinishing,  don't restring  it.  
She 
agreed.  This was after she had played approx. 18  Steinway grands I have 
rebuilt or regulated, (one advantage of being a  CAUT).  
2.     I lease a 1914 model O to the Nashville  Jazz Workshop.  It lives in 
mild victorian temperament,(oohh, a  little hiss on the back burner...).  One 
Steinway artist said she had  never had a bad night on that piano, and it is 
generally looked on with  great favor. I have two actions for it, and pieced 
it 
together out of two  pianos, with legs and lyre and stuff from one on the 
body of 
the  other.  Well known jazz pianists have played this piano and like  it.  I 
have seen some of the younger ones hit this piano, really  hard.  It has the 
original wire in it.  

While the idea of fully rebuilding both  of these with new pinblocks 
and wire is appealing,(the boards are nice and  alive, which I find in about 
1 
out of 7 Steinways over 80 years  old),  I don't know that it would be a 
musical improvement.   Both of these pianos sound really good and are almost 
free of 
false beats.  Nice bridges and the pinblocks are also very tunable with 
original pins in  them.  In short, they sound great with a new hammer under 
them, so I  
am wondering what it to be gained.  It can always be done later  without 
undoing the work being done now.  
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? 

Regards, 
Ed  Foote


 



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