A treble in trouble

[Delwin D Fandrich]

JIMRPT@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 10/27/97 6:52:33 AM, you wrote:
>
> <<I gave a key to
> my shop to one of our best pianists and he practiced on it every day.  I
> tuned it nearly every day.  I really believe that stability comes by the
> number of tunings rather than time.>>
>
> David;
>   In your example you are probably correct, but most of us don't have acess
> to a portable break-in mechanism such as your pianist.  :-)  A newly strung
> piano that has become stable will still require more tuning attention until a
> certain amount of time has passed under normal circumstances, say as in a
> Church where the piano only gets played once a week for six hymns.
>  Basically it is a combination of playing time, numbers of tunings and
> passage of time that finally gets a newly strung instrument to the 'stable'
> stage.  (That is if you can consider a piano a 'stable' instrument and it's a
> good thing for us all that it is not.)
> Jim Bryant (FL)

We do have a "break-in mechanism." It is a devise that plays each note of the piano twice per second for as long as we let it
play. Usually that is two sessions of two to three hours each. That means each hammer is hitting its string set between
28,800 and 43,200 before the piano is released. While this does a good job of settling in the action regulation and
stabilizing the voicing, it does nothing to prevent the strings from stretching. Nothing but time at pitch will do this.

--ddf