With front duplex noise on the mind this fine morning, I thought I might relate a recent, unusually strong confirmation of one of the rebuilding techniques that I assume is in wide use. We at UMKC have one of those "special" Steinway D's that seem to keep sounding good decade after decade, that we are currently restringing. (We have several others, newer and not so good.) Made in the 1940's, it was last restrung in the early 90's by Greg Hulme. I consider dressing the capo to be drudgery, a dirty, time-consuming job that is essential. One of the reasons that the job is hard, is that we use guitar fret diamond files to completely reform the shape of the capo. Difficult but worthwhile. When the day came to dress the capo of the D that Greg has rebuilt in the 90's, I got a very pleasant surprise; grooving on this capo was extremely shallow. I laid into the capo with a fret file and found that the capo already conformed to the shape of the file, and the grooving was gone in seconds. Done. I strongly suspect that Greg used a fret file almost 20 years ago, and the resulting shape both wore extremely well and was a breeze to restore. I was already a believer; now even more so. Kent
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