breaky Yamaha strings

[Benjamin Treuhaft]

this is a home piano, not a performance piano.  Steinway Concert Dept pianos
never had this problem in the 70s when they were at their worst.  Are you
sure this isn't Yamaha's fault?
----------
>From: Bdshull@AOL.COM
>To: pianotech@ptg.org
>Subject: Re: breaky Yamaha strings
>Date: Thu, May 17, 2001, 11:13 AM
>

>Ben:
>
>Welcome to the world of performance piano.  A 10 year old S400 which is 
>played on regularly by a budding concert pianist is sure to break plenty of 
>strings.  ANY performance piano with this type of use over several years is 
>going to.  C&A departments find that this can start to happen at the 5 year 
>point.   
>
>Sometimes a partial treble restringing, with no tuning pin replacement, is 
>the right decision - from the first hitch pins above the bass crossover, for 
>convenience.  Usually 99% of the breakage is from C5 and up, and if the piano 
>is going to be continually used partial restringing will give it the most 
>useful life.
>
>Bill Shull, RPT
>
>In a message dated 5/17/01 7:08:34 AM Pacific Daylight Time, blt@igc.org 
>writes:
>
><< What¹s with Yamaha strings?  This week I replaced four adjacent #14 wires 
>on
> a 10-year-old Yamaha 6' grand (Model S400E #4881266). 
>      The customer (a young concert pianist with long, thin, unmuscular arms)
> has had dozens of broken strings.
>      I called Yamaha in Los Angeles to ask if this problem is familiar to
> them.  The technician there claimed that 1) the problem is common in all
> makes, not just Yamaha; 2) such problems occur only in Gospel churches; 3)
> if a concert pianist is breaking strings she has bad training;  4) it must
> be a case of hard hammers. 
>      In 30 years of tuning I've never experienced this kind of trouble with
> string breakage other than in Yamaha grands.   One customer, admittedly a
> strong young pianist, broke almost all his high tenor and treble strings and
> was going to throw the piano away (sell it wholesale to a dealer).  He is
> Christopher Basso, the recent winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition.
>  He worked at Starbucks for a living, and didnít have a way to pay for new
> strings.   We worked out a way to string now and pay later, and he kept the
> instrument and won the competition, but Jesus!
>      The S400E has the following stringing scale in the breaky sections,
> about the same as on a Steinway:
> #13  6
> #13.5  4
> #14 4
> #14.5 5
> #15 6
> #15.5 6
> #16 5
>      Could there be something else about the scale that raises the tension
> (maybe those strings are longer than on other grands)?   My only other
> guesses would be 1) since all the broken strings were in the Capo D'Astro
> section, the pressure bar somehow cuts the strings; or 2) there's something
> breaky about Yamaha wire.  
>      Whatever the explanation, I wish Yamaha would come out and admit that
> there's something about those otherwise excellent instruments that breaks
> strings in the treble.   Yamaha artists are often the struggling variety,
> and Yamaha Corporation should find a solution and fix the instruments free
> of charge.   >>