Loose Ribs

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi Clark,

I've heard sounds like that before, but in my case, it's never turned out to 
be loose ribs.  Did you test to make sure it was the ribs?  I'm not familiar 
with Shoninger--I guess I should be grateful, hey?

To help other folks I've listed some of things I've found that caused that 
kind of noise:

Yesterday as I was tuning a bunch of Yamaha Grands for a "Monster Concert"
there was a horrible eruption around A#4 & B4 on one piano.  The lid
guide/lock part that is on the inside of the rim had only one screw and was 
hanging upside down.  Well, that was an easy one to spot.

I removed my own grand piano's short stick that resides inside the big
stick--someday I'll fix it....

One time the cold air return near the piano made a similar noise.

I've stuck sections of rubber mutes under casters to stop noise.

There was a time when Kawai fallboard lock assemblies
(and maybe others, I was Kawai dealer's tech) were noisy.

Another sort of similar sound was caused by old, flakey, glue squeeze-out 
around a soundboard.

Loose lyres!

Those little round lid ?snaps? (or whatever you call them) on Story & Clark 
(I think) verticals.

Noises can be so deceiving.  I remember spending a lot of time fixing what I 
thought was the problem on a piano, only to have the noise return--after I 
left the house which...was 40 miles from my house.  :-(

Good luck!

Barbara Richmond, RPT
near Peoria, Illinois


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Clark Sprague" <CSPRAGUE4 at woh.rr.com>
To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 10:38 PM
Subject: Loose Ribs


> Hi, all.  I was trying to tune a Shoninger spinet tonight (what a horrible
> thing), and when I got to C#5, and to a lesser extent, D5, I heard the
> weirdest sounds.  I knew that the thing had loose ribs, and they were
> buzzing most of the way up the piano, but at that point, they began to
> buzz
> "harmonically".  I have never heard this before.
>    I have attached a recording made on my Dell pocket PC, on which I run
> Tunelab.  It is a .wav file, and can be opened with Windows Media Player.
> I
> turned the volume up, and it comes through clearly.  And it is different
> the
> second time I hit C#, from the first time.
>    Anyone heard this kind of vibe coming from loose ribs before?
> Clark A. Sprague, RPT
>