Wurlitzer problem

[John M. Formsma]

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Greetings, List!

I am a relatively new subscriber, and a first-time poster, so I'll give a
brief bio before my questions.

My name is John Formsma, and I live in Blue Mountain, MS. I have been tuning
pianos part-time for several years, and have begun to tune full-time since I
have taken over my father's piano tuning business. My father passed away
this January. I am somewhat of a neophyte with certain repair and
troubleshooting procedures, and this list has given me some good information
which will be very useful in the future.

This particular problem may have been discussed earlier, and I can refer to
the archives if that is the case. The last several Wurlitzer consoles I have
tuned have had a common problem with bass strings breaking. These pianos are
all in the 20-35 year-old range, and I have had from one to four strings
break on each piano that I have tuned. Each string has broken at the coil on
the tuning pin.

>From what I surmise with my limited technical knowledge, there is too much
of an angle from where the string leaves the tuning pin to where the strings
pass over the plate, which "forces" the string to slightly wind itself over
the coil. The only thing I can figure is that there is a stress formed at
the point at which the string begins to wind over the coil which eventually
causes breakage because the string has been weakened at that point due to
repeated tunings. I have also noticed that the bass bridge pins for the
broken strings were loose every time. I suspect a correlation, but am not
sure what it would be.

I have repaired the loose bridge pins with epoxy, and replaced the strings,
but wonder if there is a way to avoid this problem. Is this a design flaw
with a certain vintage Wurlitzer?  Has anyone else had this trouble?  Any
advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

John Formsma


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