Wurlitzer problem

[barre46@ibm.net]

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Hi John,

Glad to see you on the list. This is Norm Barrett and it shouldn't take
long to tell you all that I know. What I was taught was to always lower
the pitch on a string before bringing it up. This is to break the seal
that occurs at the point where the string leaves the tuning pin. What
you observed about the angle of the string leaving the pin may be the
culprit.

When I worked for IBM on punch card machines I observed that new
operators had a lot more card jams than experienced operators. You could
watch them and they would do every thing right but they would still have
more jams. I can also recall that I had many strings break when I first
started tuning than what I do now. I wish I could tell you why but I'm
sure that I'm not alone in this.

By the way, when the string broken did you say "shucks"?

Norm Barrett
Memphis, TN

"John M. Formsma" wrote:

>  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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