Flag-poling: a way of life, or...?

[Jon Rhee]

Well said Tom. Your not crazy. Your referring to "tweaking" the pin as Randy
Potter teaches in his course.  Its a quantity thing..."Tweaking"="relaxing
the pin back into its home", and "flag-poling" or "playing the slot
machine"= brutalization.

Jon Rhee
Weymouth, MA

> From: Tvak@AOL.COM
> Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 09:58:36 -0500
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Re: Flag-poling: a way of life, or...?
> 
> 
> In a message dated 11/30/01 6:56:23 AM, mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes:
> 
> << I think you guys are talking about two different things: "playing the slot
> 
> machine", is to be minimized, that is, bending the pin up and down, or
> 
> flag-poling - >>
> 
> Actually, that's exactly what I'm referring to.  I bend the pin up.  I bend
> the pin down.  Actually I kind of relax the pin back into it's home.  But I
> do it.  I was taught it.  Now, I don't brutalize the pin, even the word bend
> might be a bit strong, but there is a lift and a relaxation to it.  Didn't
> you mention you do something of this sort in a previous post?
> 
> What I feel it does is equalize the string tension on both sides of the
> pressure bar.  Lift the pin and the string goes sharper than it ought to
> based on how far the pin moved (i.e., not much).  Why?  Because the string
> has rushed under the pressure bar.  Why?  Because there was more tension on
> the pin side of the string than on the speaking side.  Relax the pin back
> down and the pitch goes back to where you want it to be, the pin is sitting
> comfortably in the cradle and your string will stay on pitch.  You definitely
> have to leave the pin at the midway point (between the high side of the pin
> and the low) where the pin is comfortable and will not want to move.  Force
> the pin down and it will want to come back up later.  Leave it too high and
> it will want to drop back down.  Same with the string tension.  You have to
> pull just enough string under the tension bar so that the tension really IS
> equal on both sides when you relax the pin back down.  (Boy, that's hard to
> put in words.)
> 
> Anyway, that's what I do, and it seems to work for me.  Since I haven't found
> this technique in textbooks and yet I've seen others do it too, I just
> wondered if it was; A) a universal approach, B) after thinking about it
> others might realize they do it too, or C) there are a few crazies out there
> and I'm one of them.  (I think I can rule out A, B is up for grabs, and there
> was never any doubt about C.)
> 
> Tom Sivak
>