<< It seems that a very high percentage pf my
> customers are regulars, and when I tune them, hardly any of the mono or
> bi-chord strings need tuning at all. Is it wrong to let these in tune
> strings sit there year after year without movement or should I be moving
> them? >>
I have revisited untouched pianos 10 years after I tuned them and
found that many of the unisons were still completely together. However, when I
began checking tension on the top string by flexing the pin I found that many of
these strings would go 4 or more cents flat as soon as pin flex broke the
metallic bond that had formed at the agraffe. A slight "click" and the note was
flat. They are usually very stable at that flatter pitch, ie, flexing the pin
had little effect on the pitch.(I'm talking about a 'very' light flex). This
makes me suspect the topstring is getting slacker by the coil "unwinding"
Because of friction, the coil will, theoretically, never see speaking
length tension all the way to the becket, so there is a slow unwinding there that
can take a decade. Even when the note is well anchored, with time, the
topstring tension will fall far enough to let the string go flat, all at once. It is
often easy to hear this when a older coil is gripped with a pair of vise-grips
and given a twist to tighten the coil on the pin. On a new string, there is
about 200 cents worth of flattening in the coil after it has been pulled up to
tension, becket squeezed, and leveled. I can usually find 20 cents or more
drop in 10 year old pianos.
No moving the strings if they are at pitch is a short-cut that I sometimes
take, but I have to know the piano, its tuning history, and know that the
rest of the string segments are resolved. I still give all pins a bump to check
for those that are on the edge.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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