[pianotech] Was high and outside now silent pitch lowering

[Carl]

Interesting observations. Kind of hard for me to try that in a customers 
home.
I will beg off when I'm worried that the piano can't survive a large raise.

Bye the way, no golf weather,    but thankfully no hurricans, or snow storms 
.

Thanks,   Carl




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terry Farrell" <mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2012 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Was high and outside now silent pitch lowering


Yes, strings can break. You take precautions to minimize the chance. And 
then you raise pitch. On a 100 year old piano, I'll be hesitant to go with 
more than 30 cents or so overpull in the high treble.

I do a lot of pitch raises, and among 60-cent pitch raises on 100 or so year 
old pianos, I'd say that better than 90 percent are done without strings 
breaking. Sometimes you'll have one or two break, and sometimes they all 
just start popping - but not often.

I had a 1900 Everett grand in original worn & rusted to the nub condition in 
my shop a couple years ago. Just for fun I wrenched on a good number of 
tuning pins with the AccuTuner on to measure how high I could pull strings 
sharp before breaking. On this particular piano, in the tenor and treble, I 
was able to pull all of them 100 cents sharp without breaking and many went 
200 cents without breaking. None made it to 300 cents.

If they break, and you lower pitch prior to pulling it up, then the string 
was weak to begin with - or the scale was horrible.

And anyway, starting about this time of year, it's too cold in Winnipeg to 
do anything anyway! Eat a big meal and hibernate until spring breaks!  ;-)

Terry Farrell

On Nov 1, 2012, at 3:08 PM, Carl wrote:

> I've been reading many, not all, of these (high and outside) posts for a 
> couple of weeks now, and only
> one fellow brought up the possibility of broken strings on pitch raises. I 
> 've had many pitch raise
> needs and always  worry about the possibility of breakeage.  I'm aware 
> that a piano 10 or 15 years
> old can be raised without much worry, but many are considerably older, and 
> look and feel like all
> the strings might break with an even 10 cent raise.  That's likely an 
> exageration, but all you need is
> one string to break, and this adds considerable time to a tuning, plus 
> other factors , such as cost
> for the extra work .  ????????
>
> CT  - Winnipeg.