[CAUT] False Beats and George Winston

[maxpiano]

In a performance/theater venue, I service a Yamaha CFIII that has some fast 
false beat issues on 2-3 keys in the top octave and very few false beats in 
the rest of the piano.  I am told this was the piano Andre Watt used during 
his (brief?) departure from the Steinway Artist fold some 15 years ago. 
Nothing I have tried so far on D#7 and F7 has worked, such as tapping the 
bridge pins.  The beats do not respond to pushing against the bridge pins 
with a screwdriver, so I am assuming it is not an issue of loose bridge 
pins.

George Winston is to be there a week from tomorrow.  This will be about the 
fourth time I have tuned this piano for his concerts.  He complains about 
unisons in the treble, and doesn't seem to know how to sort out the 
difference between bad unisons and false beats.  I get the impression he is 
not open to the suggestion that false beats are par for the course up there, 
and he wants all the focus he can get at the top.  He has the habit of 
carrying a bunch of rubber mutes with him and laying them next to the tuning 
pins wherever he detects a bad unison, both before the concert after he has 
practiced, and during the show for touch-up at intermission.  Interesting, 
at intermission there may be some hairy unisons in the tenor/low treble with 
no mutes laid down, but a proliferation of them by the top octave!

I am wondering if it would help, when I go to prepare the piano a week from 
today, a day ahead of the concert (I'll be touching it up the afternoon of 
the concert) if I would go prepared with emery cloth strips to shoeshine the 
capo bar on the affected notes.  I trust I could get the strings settled 
down again after the loosening.  I have also thought of Roger Jolly's 
suggestion of taking the rear end of a coil lifter tool (the 3 notches for 
aligning strings), setting it onto the 3 strings of a unison and driving it 
sideways and back, but I don't want to risk breaking strings.

Any advice or other suggestions for quieting the false beats in the top 
octave?

Bill Maxim, RPT
Columbia, SC