List, I had emailed for information about two pianos, circa 1900-1920 that I was considering using Pure Sound wire. One an upright and another a large grand. I was advised that the Pure Sound wire, being softer, was not a suitable wire for high tension scales that began to be common at the turn of the century plus or minus a few years. I am grateful for this advise that I received last year from Pure Sound... Henry Nicolaides Piano Technician Southern Illinois University Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 09:27:06 -0500 From: radkins at coe.edu To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Pure Sound Wire Friends, I used it on an L according to the scale provided two years ago. The tone was sweeter, if not as strong, and the attack was really nice. The best attack I've heard from strings. This might be because they are softer wire. I only had one string break at the hitch pin, which I replaced and the others held, UNTIL this year, second term, when they began breaking from about A4 up through C6 I believe. Mostly the 16.5, 16s, but I did have some 15 1/2s, 17s, and an 18 break too. I reported this to Carlos, the developer, and he called me from Amsterdam to discuss this. We spoke at some length. Needless to say, he was very upset to hear this. He claims that the string is softer and tends to wrap around the bearing points, so you must first lower tension (back off) before tuning. He says that since he's altered his approach to tuning the pure sound wire he's not had any breaking strings. Try it and see,I'm going to. He kindly sent me replacement wire at his expense for my trouble. I have replaced most of the pure sound wire w/Mapes. I agree, I regularly tune pianos with strings atleast 50 if not 100 years old that have not broken in all that time! I wanted to stainless steel wire to eliminate the rust problem. Well, I probably did eliminate the rust problem with it, but got a breakage problem instead. When you install the wire, you must wind the coils slowly, and also make your hitch ends slowly. He advises that you put some lube on the hitch pins, and perhaps a pin point at the agraffes or bridge pins. I had lubed the hitch pins, but not the bridge or agraffes. You can also lube the capo on the non speaking side, and any bearing points between the tuning pin and the capo. This "should" minimize breaking. I don't mind replacing one or two occassionaly, but whole sections are just too much. Juan says this wire/scaling was made for pianos with a very "short scale". I don't know what kind of scale the B has. Even the new B's sound weird at the break from note #20 and 21,22. It's been a great experiment, but really upset me when they began to pop left and right, and over night! Hope Juan's techniques will prevent any more. I won't be using that wire again, until I can verify the new approach works. I'd like to do a Steinway S that is very rusty with it. Maybe just Mapes will have to do. YMMV....! Cheers Richard Adkins Coe College _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100510/9d529bb9/attachment.htm>
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