[pianotech] Coils (was: Beckets)

[Israel Stein]

Ron and all,

My conjecture (and it's just a conjecture) is that this is a legacy 
thing from older instruments (harpsichords and early fortepianos) - 
before the tuning pin with a hole through was invented. Those early 
tuning pins were basically  headless nails with one end flattened for 
the tuning tool (whatever they called it). The way the wire stays on the 
tuning pin is by winding enough coils over the end of the wire for the 
friction to keep it in place. That's still done on  harpsichord replicas 
that are "historically (or as Bill Dowd called it "hysterically") 
accurate".

Now, with modern piano wire 3-4 coils take up very roughly 1/4" on the 
tuning pin. That's about how much wire (at a minimum) you have to wind 
over a hole-less pin to keep it all in place (of course, much thinner 
wire, a lot more coils). So when the "pin with a hole" came into use, 
they just kept winding as much wire on it as "looked right" without 
thinking about whether or not it was really necessary. (By the way, 
anyone know when the "pin with a hole" got invented?)  This may be a 
total fantasy - but it sounds plausible.

Israel Stein



From:
Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:38:28 
-0500David Skolnik wrote:
>
> Why does everything have to be so pointlessly complicated? It's 
> extremely simple, like me, and stuff everyone who's been reading the 
> list for any length of time ought to be familiar with. I'll try again. 
> The pinblock can be drilled at the angle necessary to achieve a 
> pin/string angle that doesn't make tight coils difficult to achieve, 
> while having the BOTTOM of the coil end up at the height you 
> personally require for whatever reason REGARDLESS of whether there are 
> 4, 3, or 1-1/2 coils on the pin. The number of coils you choose 
> doesn't itself preclude any of the above. That's it. All other 
> observations and obfuscatory diversions are beyond the scope of this 
> statement.
> Ron N

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