Newish D with issues.

[A440A@aol.com]

Susan Writes: 

<< I don't go for aggressive string levelling either, just a minimal amount 
if 
I notice falseness in the sound. I don't like kinks in wire. <snip> All this 
yanking and 
banging on wire, pulling it across bearings, jamming it into bridges, sort 
of says "premature aging" to me.  >>

     I once agreed, but have changed my mind.  When I began, I expected all 
pianos to be museum quality.  This may have been due to our pianos at North 
Bennett being some very fine instruments that B. Garlick turned us loose on, on 
maybe just that left-over idealism of the '60s having found a hope in the world 
of craft and not yet tempered by practicality.  I built everything to last, 
wanting pianos to be immortal, rather than just a slogan used to advertise 
them.  (I know, the "Instrument of the Immortals" doesn't say the piano is 
immortal, just the player ).  Many of thes pianos have been in professional daily 
service for over two decades, now.  I have seen my work wear out in front of me, 
and I think I have learned what is durable and what is not. 
 I don't know how long CA maintains structural integrity, but it is certainly 
something  valuable. 
  I resisted the idea of CA on tuning pins, until the second time I tried it, 
now I am sold.  The use of it on bridge pins is also a former taboo that I 
have rethought.  With the poor bridge pinning now on the market, it is a real 
improvement on many notes.   
  However,  over the years at my one school,(28 now),  I have tracked the 
string breakage, false notes, and remedies on my original "family" of 15 
Steinways that Vanderbilt inherited from Peabody.  I have bent wire at the agraffe, 
agressively, for at least 20 of those years, and I cannot find a single 
short-coming due to that.  The notes are no longer sounding twangy, the strings are 
not breaking, and the tuning is un-affected after the first pull.  I often 
relevel a wire after I have pulled it back up to pitch.  Sometimes a lot. Agraffes 
are simply out of square by more than the hammer can be shaped for.   Some of 
these pianos, like the ones onstage, are tuned two or three times a week, 
(complete,88 note tunings).  The bent wires perform just like all the others!   
The string breakage occurs in capo areas, which have never had much leveling 
needed.  So I would encourage any to explore the bent world. 
        It is easy to overdo in the sense that you can lift a string higher 
than it needed to go, and put it beyond where the other two can also go. Then 
you have a high string and get to bend it back down!  With experience, we can 
know almost exactly how much to bend the string, and the ability to level a 
piano in 5 minutes can make a big difference.  
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html