false beats was ...

[Bill Ballard]

Richard Moody <remoody@easnetsd.com> rote:
<<With inadequate f b and thesoundboard entering a dry period,  a
reasonable explanation is thatthe strings can 'ride' up from the seating
and cause beats, and thustapping down eliminates them. >>

That may well be a genuine cause for strings riding up on the pins. Two
other causes are Jerry Lee Lewis and the stringer who hasn't gotten to
the initlal seating of the strings. But I've thought for some time that
the business of tapping down was over-rated. So according to Michael
Wathen did Harold Conklin, as well as Ron Coners of Steinway C&A.  Most
false beats I've ever cured have come from a lateral tap to a string
which, while still firmly on the bridge instead of up a pin, had simply
rhumba'ed its way out if the corner where the pin meets wood. But then, I
did spend one fascinating morning with RPT John Hartman at his shop with
a Hamburg O he'd completed, massaging and prying the string every which
way. Lo and Behold, if the first ten vectors applied to a string didn't
work, the eleventh did. (Musta been the chicken feathers and the bat's
blodd....)

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter

"No one builds the *perfect* piano, you can only remove the
obstacles to that perfection during the building."    ...........LaRoy
Edwards