[pianotech] bass or plainsteel strings?

[David Ilvedson]

Give up on the Universal strings.   Take measurements, call Mapes or favorite string maker...get the string within a week and do it right.   You can still tune at the first appointment and come back to install the string.   I give them a price including part, shipping and the installation appointment.   If you have a ringing damper...I've temporarily installed a flat damper or they can tough it out...

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA  94044

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Noah Frere" <noahfrere at gmail.com>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Received: 7/15/2009 2:25:45 PM
Subject: Re: [pianotech] bass or plainsteel strings?


>Thanks for your reply. I have also been increasingly dissatisfied with
>Universal Strings. However, even ordering specific strings often pose
>troubled matches I've noticed lately. If I receive one more poorly matched
>string, I'm going to order both bichords...
>Anyway, I should also have known that since 2 complete notes were out, there
>would be no chance of replacing with Universals, since I need 2 pairs. These
>were indeed copperwound, and I'm afraid since they're at the break that the
>tension may be a bit high. I will ask the stringmaker if he can do something
>about that. I did not measure the adjacent strings.

>On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 1:23 PM, Joe DeFazio <defaziomusic at verizon.net>wrote:

>> Hi Noah,
>> As David Porritt mentioned, the hitch pins (and the bridge pins) will tell
>> you if you have a bichord or a trichord.  However, some cheaper American
>> pianos of that era (and Currier certainly counts as cheap!) use both wound
>> bichords and steel bichords in the low tenor.  So, if you see copper
>> bichords to the left and steel bichords to the right, you will have to look
>> carefully at the surfaces of the damper felt and hammer strike point, where
>> the difference will most likely be discernible.
>>
>> If copper is the "correct answer," I would advise against using universal
>> strings, which one of my friends calls "universally wrong."  They never
>> match in timbre, and their inharmonicity is usually so wildly different that
>> they don't tune well with their neighbors.  Why "fix" a piano so that it
>> sounds even worse than it did before it broke? (Yes, for the wise guys out
>> there, it is indeed possible for even a Currier to sound worse than it did
>> when new!)
>>
>> If you make accurate and precise measurements of the speaking length (hitch
>> to speaking bridge pin length, hitch to upper termination, hitch to tuning
>> pin) of the missing strings and their lower neighbors, as well as core and
>> wrap diameters for the lower neighbors, plus twist length near the hitch pin
>> loop, a good string maker ought to be able to scale and manufacture new
>> strings which will sound much better than universals.  If four strings in a
>> row broke, though, that may be a clue that the original scaling was
>> improper.  Ask the string maker to double-check the breaking percentage of
>> the newly designed strings before manufacturing them, and to adjust a little
>> for safety if necessary.  You probably don't want to have the new strings
>> break just like the old....
>>
>> Joe DeFazio
>> Pittsburgh
>>