Puzzler

[Michael Magness]

On Feb 5, 2008 6:00 PM, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote:

>
> >   Who will rid me of this troublesome priest! (Henry II in reference to
> > Becket (St. Thomas)).
>
> Troublesome, perhaps, but putatively askance.
> Ron N
>

Reminiscent of a tuning pin I removed from a Jesse French spinet many years
ago. The tuning pins were generally loose and the piano wouldn't hold tune,
so as was the practice at the time, I doped it using . I found it improved
the tuning pin tightness and hold throughout the piano except for one pin
the center string of A-440. The owner informed me that note had never held
tune since she had first begun to play the piano as a girl. She was by then
a wife and mother with children of her own taking lessons. I decided to
replace the pin with an oversize and unhooked the string and wound out the
pin. I discovered it had stamped threads rather than cut threads and that
the threads were only stamped on the upper third of the shank where threads
should be, the lower 2/3's were as smooth as a center pin. This, of course,
explained why it had never held, I went ahead and replaced it with a number
3 rather than a number 4 and it held quite nicely.

Another oddball tuning pin I've run across, only in Starck (made in
Chicago) pianos were the pins without a becket hole that went all the way
through! The becket hole stopped short of being drilled through to the other
side. The first time you notice it is when a string has broken, which
happens often on these nasty little creatures, so you turn the hole on the
tuning pin toward the ceiling and begin fishing the wire in the other side,
but it won't go you try and try and try and finally turn the pin to look and
there is no hole on the other side! At first I thought it was a faulty pin
but as I worked on more of them I found they were all that way!

Mike

-- 
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Michael Magness
Magness Piano Service
608-786-4404
www.IFixPianos.com
email mike at ifixpianos.com
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