Bose Imperial Bass Strings

[Farrell]

I've had David Sanderson make me a couple sets of bass strings. The strings were made from my measurements. He purposely tries to make the wrapped length as long as he possibly can with the winding touching the bridge pins or agraffes. I forget all his rationale, but I think the advantage is to simply fully take advantage of all the length available to make the string. As I recall, the winding came within about 1/8-inch of the pins and agraffes (maybe it was further, but I do remember it being amazingly close). Seem to me to make sense to get them as long as is possible - but not risk touching. How much will a string stretch over the years? I don't really know.

Terry Farrell

BTW, the Sanderson strings sounded fabulous.
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul McCloud" <pmc303@ricochet.com>
To: "'Pianotech'" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 11:52 AM
Subject: Bose Imperial Bass Strings


Friends:

            I have a Bosendorfer Imperial 9' grand that has been
restrung.  The bass string replacement sets I've gotten from the string
company haven't been satisfactory, and I'm wondering what to do about
it.  Here's the history.

            The first set was made by a company in Canada (won't name)
who was recommended by our associate store's technician.  (The piano is
for sale at the store where I work).  I sent the original strings for
them to duplicate.  They were very conscientious about making them
exactly the same as the old ones.  It seems that the old strings had
windings VERY close to the bridge pins.  Since we (at the store) were
concerned about some local tech finding this and badmouthing the piano
(and possibility of buzzing on the bridge pins) we decided to reorder
the strings and make the windings end farther from the bridge.  I spoke
to the winder, and he suggested sending a pattern, which I did.  Now,
they had the old strings and the pattern to work with.  The new strings
arrived, and were installed.  Several of the strings had windings that
came extremely close to the agraffes, many less than ¼".  Some were
almost touching.  When I called to complain, they said I had made the
pattern wrong.  Ok, maybe so.  But, thankfully, he was willing to remake
about half a dozen of the closest ones, at no charge.  They were
satisfactory, but after installing a couple, I realized that the rest of
the strings were stretching (it took a few months before I installed the
new replacements).  The other strings had stretched so much, the
windings on them also came very close to the agraffes.  At this point, I
decided to go to another string company (U.S. maker) who said he had the
string scale already (36 string bass scale).  I ordered the full set,
and they arrived a few days ago.  I found that this set was exactly like
the original set the Canadian company had made, with the windings so
close to the bridge pins, and the windings near the agraffes.  I didn't
install the strings, actually, but I could see that they were too long,
and would have come too close to the agraffes when pulled to pitch.

            At this point, I don't know if I should expect the American
string company to take back the strings.  It's not their fault,
necessarily, nor is it mine, since they assured me that they had made
lots of these and had no complaints. 

I'm inclined to use a tape to measure the distances from hitch pin (I
got one of those special tape measures at a convention), and have custom
strings made from the actual numbers.  But, I'm not a rebuilder, nor do
I have much experience with these Bosies, so any suggestions y'all might
have would be gratefully appreciated.  

Thanks,

            Paul McCloud

            San Diego