Excellent observation, David. Now that we have a plethora of fine, expensive, tuning levers to choose from, I'd like to see some custom made tips! It's Ironic that we spend all this money on the wrench but still have to put the same old tips on it - and the tip has a huge impact on the feel of the lever! It reminds me of the old saying: Measure with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, cut it with a chainsaw! We might be better off with a cheap lever and about 10 different head/tip combinations to get the best fit on the pin. On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:06 PM, David Nereson <da88ve at gmail.com> wrote: > > I would imagine the ends of tuning pins vary as much as the tips made > to fit them. Jim Harvey used to claim that Kawai made the most accurate tip > for tuning levers, but that was when he was a tech rep for Kawai. And maybe > they did fit very well -- Kawai pins, that is. How many manufacturers of > tuning pins have there been? Seriously -- does anybody know? When it comes > to cast-iron plates, there haven't been that many -- Kelly and Wickham come > to mind, and then the companies that cast their own. But tuning pins? Were > there many or just a couple? Even if they're now defunct, we most likely > still run into their pins in pianos. How many manufacturers are there > now? Surely at least a few in Japan, Korea, China, and at least one or two > (or five?) in Europe. What about here in the U.S.? I imagine Steinway > makes their own -- or do they. It just seems that the shape of the tuning > end of all those thousands of pins wouldn't be that consistent. Or is it? > How accurate is the machining (or stamping?) of those tuning pin tips? I'll > bet a tip that seems to have no rock in one piano would be wobbly in > another, which would foul up the judging of these super-still tuning lever > head/tip assemblies. > --David Nereson, RPT > -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090325/93174a20/attachment.html>
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