[CAUT] Baldwin SD

[Susan Kline]

Hi, Avery

Well, heck, if they buffed the tops of the agraffes ... the whole piano 
should have jumped to attention!

It is hard to figure sound differences by email, but I'll give it a try.

Sometimes in the bottom of the tenor section, a note or two will have a 
high harmonic beating  away, even for soft playing. When totally fed up 
with it, I've once or twice (making sure that no one was looking) taken a 
small blunt screwdriver, placed it between the strings on the non-speaking 
side of the agraffe, and twisted sideways. It felt like a somewhat dirty 
procedure, but the noises stopped.

I think, if meeting with simple poor tone quality in the section just below 
the first capo, I might try taking the same (favorite, soft, blunt) 
screwdriver (thanks, Sears) and pressing down on the wire immediately 
behind the agraffe (tuning pin side.) If the sound improves, then I have 
sometimes woven a little tent of bushing cloth through the strings, as if 
they were in the capo duplex, and then pushed it down against the agraffe. 
Well, it's something to try, and does no harm.

I suspect that, yes, you'll eventually want new strings and agraffes, at 
least for that section.

I love a good Baldwin bass sound. Newport's SD-10 has a great one -- rich, 
interesting, easy to tune, not given to brashness in soft playing, and the 
tone never breaks, no matter what sledgehammer-blows a pianist throws at 
it. Bronze.

Susan



At 09:09 AM 4/1/2006 -0600, you wrote:
>List,
>
>I put this on the pianotech list Saturday PM but so far have only had 1 
>response. I also want to pick anyone's brain on this list who might have 
>knowledge of this problem and/or the best way to correct it. Thanks.
>
>Avery Todd
>University of Houston
>
>
>Do any of you have any direct experience with an SD-6 #118127 (1952 I was 
>told)? My atlas is
>at the university.
>
>Today, I went to look at one for sale at a store at a good price. For 
>several years, we've been
>needing one to put into our large orchestra/band rehearsal hall to avoid 
>having to move one into there from our major performance hall for 
>rehearsals of big concertos.
>
>It's been refinished and had new hammers (Renner Blues, I think) installed 
>on the old shanks.
>Graphited knuckles, etc. Anyway, I'm not worried about all that. That, I 
>can handle.
>
>My question is, there is a tone problem in the middle agraffe section. 
>(It's so hard to describe sounds in an e-mail.) The dealer kept saying he 
>thought it was primarily a hammer fitting/string leveling problem. Yes, 
>there is some of that that needs to be done. But I believe it's a problem 
>in the agraffes themselves. This isn't a hammer fitting type of sound. 
>It's a distorted/zinging kind of sound. Like a termination problem or 
>something not seated well. There are some agraffes that are not parallel 
>to the strings and I first thought that was the problem. But there are 
>also some with that same sound where the agraffes are lined up correctly. 
>I'm assuming it probably came that way from the factory. And it's only in 
>that one section. I didn't have my tools with me because I didn't expect 
>anything like that to come up, so I couldn't even experiment a little. You 
>don't really notice it all that much when just normally playing it. Just 
>when playing each note individually. Especially with a little power.
>
>The piano has never been restrung. Even still has the aluminum wrapped 
>type upper bass strings. But it sounds great. A BIG bass sound! Decent 
>sustain. The only real problem is in that one area. Have any of you run 
>across this? Can the agraffes be straightened a little without removing 
>the strings? My semi-educated guess is that that section is going to have 
>to be restrung with new agraffes. Or at least, "redone" agraffes. They did 
>buff the tops of them, though. :-)
>
>This is pre-accujust hitch pins and from the first treble break down, has 
>one single-tie string on each unison. The tech at the store said they 
>could correct the problem, which I would prefer to have done before we buy 
>it but I was wondering if any of you had any ideas? The dealer said he'd 
>pay me to do the regulation & voicing. Which it needs.
>
>Am I on the right track about the agraffes? Thanks.