[pianotech] Tuning Failure

Chuck Behm behmpiano at gmail.com
Mon Jun 14 05:18:34 MDT 2010


>I've been tuning pianos for 7 years. I'm not unaccustomed to rendering
problems. But this is the only time I've been defeated by a piano like this.
Tuning pin tightness is good, except for a couple. The bridge is not loose.
The plate is not cracked. The upper termination point for the tenor and
treble strings is not a cast surface, but a long cylindrical rod in a groove
on the plate. The unisons agree with each other, but whole ranges of notes
simply will not stay where I put them, even after multiple passes. I was
unable to diagnose the problem. What am I missing?"<

Floyd - This situation reminds me of a Fischer grand I worked on years and
years ago. It was a really strange thing - every time I went over the treble
the bass went drastically out of tune and vise-versa. Pulling the action and
inspecting the fit of the pinblock against the flange in the cast iron plate
with a mirror I could see that it wasn't a tight fit, but not much more. I
went out on a limb and told the owner that I thought there was a problem
with the pinblock not seating firmly against the flange, and recommended
replacement.

Thankfully, when I pulled the plate for a closer look, I found that the
pinblock in fact only touched the flange in 3 spots, but importantly not all
3 at the same time. It was like a teeter-totter, with the middle spot always
in contact, but the outer 2 touching only 1 at a time, depending on which
way the block was being pulled. Great job of fitting at the factory!

When the block shifted, the dynamics of tension would change on both the
treble and bass end of the piano, thus making it impossible to tune.

A vertical piano, of course, has a different type of pinblock construction,
but I'm just wondering if some similar fault might exist.  Chuck Behm
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