I hope you'll excuse me if this question seems trivial, (yeah, yeah, another newbie - I'm a fairly new tuner). I tuned my first Baldwin a couple of days ago, a 2 year old Hamilton. Most of the tuning pins were so tight one could almost justify using an impact wrench. However, I did run across a couple of pins that were extremely loose, and the one that troubles me the most is the center pin for the A37. It pulled up okay (tight but otherwise felt fine). However, when I pushed the hammer back the other way to drop the pitch down, I nearly fell off the bench because there was no resistance. BUT the pitch didn't change any. My first moment of horror was that the tuning pin was broken, but it seemed to be okay. At any rate, since I was essentially doing a pitch raise anyway, I left this note as was (a couple of cents sharp) and tuned the rest of the piano to it. I would appreciate any suggestions as to possible cause and solution to the problem. In retrospect, I'm wondering if the problem might relate to too much bearing on the pressure bar - I did have problems with several notes (mostly in upper treble) in settling the note on the desired pitch - i.e. I could pull the note up, but couldn't seem to get it to drop down to pitch, then all of a sudden the note would be below pitch again. Any and all suggestions will be most welcomed. Thanks.
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC