[pianotech] Beckets

[John Formsma]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote:

>
> While we're here, and have already paid the price to get here, I've always
> wondered why three turns is so sacred. Is it another case of the mysterious
> 7° pin angle syndrome - arbitrary conditioning from birth? Or is there some
> absolutely critical but as yet undetected reason for it? Who's got the stone
> tablets?
>
> Having done enough "rob from one coil to feed the other" in all those old
> junk Kimballs where strings have broken at the point they leave the pin
> (why???), I'm not convinced that anything beyond 1-1/2 turns is necessary to
> function. I've used something in the vicinity of 2-3/4 turns forever. That
> puts the becket to the back, or bottom, of the pin where even the most
> critical tech has to lean over or down to detect my alignment failures. Make
> 'em work for it.
>
>
I once left less than 1 1/2 turns on a string.  It was almost a complete
turn, but not quite.  What happened was that my specially-ordered B0 string
for a Steinway B somehow (ahem) got cut too short.  Someone (ahem again)
must have measured three fingers from the wrong place (darn those kind of
people). Rather than leaving in defeat and leaving an empty B0, I decided to
see what would happen if it got left as is. That was 3-4 years ago. The
string is as stable as any other.

And yes, I ordered another string right away, intending to replace it
because "*it surely won't work." * But after seeing how stable it was, I
figured what's the point, really?  So somewhere around the shop, there's an
extra B0 string.  Where is anyone's guess, though. <G>

-- 
JF
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