Unwrapped ends of bass strings

[John Delacour]

At 21:17 02/10/01 -0400, Newton Hunt wrote:
>This should show what I mean.
>
>This set was made, by a known provider, from a verified set of
>specifications I supplied.
>
>Needless to say, I, and the rebuilder, are annoyed no end.

Quite rightly so, and yet the error is very regular and consistent, which 
shows that either the marker-out was cutting corners or misinterpreting 
your data.

On a grand with agraffes, the copper on both strings should be the same 
distance from the agraffe, of course.

It has always been English practice to work from a rubbing plus any 
patterns and specifications the customer likes to provide.  If a customer 
sends me either just the old strings or just a list of measurements, I 
charge an extra fee for the added time required to work in this way.  It 
would be impossible for this error to occur working with a rubbing.

What you have here is presumably a Steinway with the bridge pins in a 
straight line instead of staggered in the normal (proper) way for equal 
speaking lengths.  I am guessing that your 'copper line' at the soundboard 
bridge is good and that for some reason he has given both strings of the 
bichords exactly the same cover length, as would be required in most 
pianos.  If you specified differential cover lengths (as you should have) 
and he thought he knew better and equalized them, then he has cocked 
up.  In the hypothetical case that you specified equal cover lengths, then 
he didn't.

Judging from the very blurred jpeg, it looks to me as though the 
stringmaker has worked very methodically and exactly on the basis of wrong 
measurements.  Wherever the fault lies as to the cover data, any sapient 
stringmaker would question any data that resulted in staggered pairs like 
that.  If he hasn't learned yet that Steinway grands are queer, he hasn't 
been paying attention.

JD