Paul asked: >I am having a dilemma with a Steinway S in the highest 2 treble >strings. I can t seem to get them to pitch without breaking. I ve tried >using emery cloth to smooth out the V bar. No luck. I ve lost count of >how many times I ve tried different strings. I m beginning to suspect the >length of the strings in the speaking area is too long. I ve measured the >bridge pin to V bar on the B7note to be very near 2 ½ . Is this >usual? Other Steinways have lengths of 2 ¼ or less for the same note. In >our store, we have just this one S . It s about 15 years old. I measured the note on my S&S 'S' (Hamburg, 1937). It's around 2 3/8". The 2.5" is too long. You're sitting around 1900 MPa, or about 80% breaking tension for #13 according to the Roslau data I have. > Would it be advisable to go to a 12 ½ gauge string instead of the 13 > which is labeled on the plate? It seems that the breaking strength of > the wire is too close to the tension necessary to get the note to pitch. Help! B7 on my S&S 'S' is 0.8 mm, i.e. #13 gauge, as marked on your plate. You could pick up a little extra strength by moving to a thinner gauge: #12 (0.7 mm) would take you down to about 76% breaking tension. But you don't get much tensile pickup with high carbon steel wire. Best would be to try it and see if that little bit might help. Alternatively, you could try a different batch of wire - there's a lot of variation in specs. You might get lucky. What was on there before you got the piano? It can't have been breaking these wires for the past 15 years. Warning: Calculations above done on only one cup of coffee, so likely to be error-prone. Stephen Stephen Birkett Fortepianos Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos 464 Winchester Drive Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2T 1K5 tel: 519-885-2228 mailto: sbirkett@real.uwaterloo.ca http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC