[CAUT] baldwin concert grand

[Susan Kline]

I have tuned and worked on a 1970 Baldwin SD10 with fittings a little 
like these. It started out with extreme tuning instability, in the 
capo sections. I figured out how to bring it to a more stable 
situation, over time. One could say that this piano and I tuaght each 
other concert prep.

First, your stability problem almost certainly comes from a lot of 
friction in the pressure points between the front segments of the 
strings, causing poor rendering. You can get it a lot better by 
hauling off on your settling blows and giving the strings a good 
wallop, several times. Of course be sure the letoff is sufficient, so 
you don't go breaking shanks. When this is done repeatedly over time, 
tuning after tuning, stability greatly improves.

Second, you can improve rendering a lot. I wrote an article in the 
Journal about what I did to this piano, in June 2000. I called it 
"Freshening Strings". The fittings on your Baldwin might not be quite 
the same as mine -- I believe they changed some of it over time. Mine 
had a fairly large radius curve for the main bearing, a longish 
duplex in front of it, then the strings each went into their own long 
curved grooves and from  there to the tuning pin. There was a lot of 
drag in those grooves, plus the pretty blunt front bearing tended to 
get tiny grooves in it (though it was very hard metal) which led to 
zings and jangles when played loud.

I slacked the strings all the way (one note at a time), pushed them 
to one or the other side, polished the main bearing with a strip of 
medium emery cloth shoeshine style (it turned shiny bright, 
mirror-like), then rubbed graphite from a 6B pencil into the grooves. 
Rendering improved amazingly, plus the zings eased up. Thinking about 
it, I realized that by slacking everything off, and then pulling the 
strings back in, I was assuring that the wire at all the bearing 
points was fresh, because even if one wanted to, it would be 
impossible to pull the strings back to exactly the same position as 
before. Inevitably, if slacked this far off, some wire would wander 
around the hitch pin as one gradually pulled up first one side, then 
the other. Hence "freshening strings."

It was slightly scary trying all this, but nothing broke and the 
results were excellent. The piano became far more stable, the tone 
improved, people actually liked the thing. One Russian guy, 
adjudicating for the state teachers convention, actually chose it for 
his recital over our quite nice new Steinway D.

Hope this is of help ...

Susan Kline

At 10:16 AM 5/30/2010, you wrote:
>list - i recently tuned a baldwin 9' grand where several notes in 
>the 1st capo range were really out of tune.  on this piano, each 
>note has one little duplex "bar" in front of the hitchpin, and right 
>in the killer octave these "bars" were wildly out of position, like, 
>they were an very odd angles to the strings instead of perpendicular 
>to each string.  now, this could only happen during restringing, 
>since they can't really be moved under full string tension.  has 
>anybody seen anything like this?  would this cause extreme tuning 
>instability?  why would they be at an angle to the string?  the rest 
>of the piano has the duplex bars aligned perpendicular to the strings.
>best,
>jeremy