[pianotech] Raising rates in recession

[Terry Farrell]

I'm not sure what you mean by your first sentence - when I pitch raise  
I start from A0 and raise all unisons as I go. My general observation  
is that if the piano will need 25% overpull in the tenor and 35%  
overpull in the treble, then drop in pitch one observes in those  
sections will approximate the % overpull needed.

My comment about not wanting to pull the string too sharp (like 40 or  
60 cents sharp) was based not on anything concrete (like a breaking  
strength), but rather comments I've read suggesting that you can  
distort a string by pulling it too sharp. I really don't know if that  
is true or not. Nor do I know what the nature of any potential damage  
is (permanent stretch? digging grooves in aggraffes/capo? bridge tops/ 
pin?). Most comments I've read suggest it is best to not pull a string  
more than 25 cents sharp to be sure to avoid damaging it. I try to not  
exceed that on nice pianos. I don't worry too much about it on junk  
(most pianos).

You are quite right about the breaking %s. Many moons ago I had a 100- 
year-old Everett grand in my shop for restringing (my piano). Just for  
the fun on it, I was curious how sharp you could pull the strings  
before they broke. It was quite apparent all the strings on the piano  
were original. I probably tested about a dozen of them before getting  
bored. All of them broke in the 300 to 400 cent sharp range.

Terry Farrell

On Jul 3, 2010, at 1:02 AM, David Love wrote:

> Probably not quite that much since the total movement of the pitch  
> to the
> flat side in this case comes from tuning the strings on both sides  
> of the
> note.  So if you are tuning up from the bottom and get to C4, for  
> example,
> it will have dropped maybe half of that amount, say 115 cents, which  
> means
> that even at 30% overpull you only need to overpull by 34.5 cents.   
> While it
> may be more in the treble keep in mind that pulling C6 on a Steinway  
> B (for
> example) one full semi tone sharp (100 cents) raises the break point  
> only
> from 60% to 67%.  Still quite manageable and much more than you are  
> likely
> to need.  Breakage on pitch raises, in my view, doesn't come from  
> exceeding
> break point percentages overall, it comes from friction issues  
> through the
> bearing points and that can happen even without a significant  
> overpull.
>
> David Love
> www.davidlovepianos.com