Two broken bass strings in one tuning?????

[John Voigt]

This may or may not relate, but I recently tuned a Yamaha P22 where a single
bass string broke seemingly without reason.  When I looked at the next
string I noticed that because of the severe angle from the v-bar to the
tuning pin the string was beginning to climb over the coils.

Now for the rest of the story.

This piano is at a school in a small town near me.  I tune part time and
squeezed this tuning into a busy time, but because of my rush, did not bring
along spare strings to repair this one.  I came back a few days later to
repair the string after school.  When I arrived, I could see that all was
not well.  The local police and the county sherrif were just arriving and
were talking with each other outside the school

There had been a bomb threat a week earlier and I feared there may have been
another.  I forged ahead, walked into the school with my bag of tools,
greeting the officer on my way in.  He said nothing.  Once in the school I
found the music room locked.  Visiting with the custodian (across the yellow
crime tape) I found that indeed there had been another bomb threat.  The
students had been evacuated and if I wanted to get into the music room, I
would have to talk to the superintendant who was going to bring the students
back to the school so they could get their things before they went home.

I found out this was the second bomb threat in two days, the third in 10
days.  The DCI was on sight investegating the one from the day before.  The
superintendant let me in the music room as it had been searched and secured.
He said the faculty would be on the second floor meeting with the DCI.  I
proceeded to tie my knot and pull the string up to pitch.  As I was doing
this I had the awful thought of what would happen if my knot did not hold.
A loud bang would not be looked upon kindly at this time.  Fortunately, it
held.

John Voigt


-----Original Message-----
From: Samuel Choy [mailto:srchoy at charter.net]
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 10:27 PM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Two broken bass strings in one tuning?????


What's up with this? I was tuning a Baldwin console tonight and two bass
strings broke!!! F2 (one of the unisons) and G1. I can't figure out why they
broke. There was no visible rust on the strings. I barely raised the pitch
when they broke. When the second broke, I decided to stop tuning. I didn't
have enough time to attempt a splice on the strings, so I'm going to go back
tomorrow.

Any suggestions? Any ideas as to a cause? I was hoping to look up the SN in
my Pierce Piano Atlas, didn't see it. It's 809893, but the atlas didn't list
any SN close to that, so I wonder if I copied it wrong. I wish I had asked
the owner how old the piano is.

Thanks. Sam.