buzz

[Ron Nossaman]

> I have a new client next week with a "buzz".  I'm not good at finding 
> such things, but assuming it is a wound string, how do I make SURE that 
> is the culprit?  Is there a way to force the buzz to be louder, or to 
> eliminate the buzz in that string? 
> 
> thanks
> les  bartlett


I had a new one last week with "buzzes" in the bass, 
nonspecific. It was a "rebuilt" Steinway L. The plate looked 
like it had been dipped in a reddish copper goo, agraffes 
included. Pinblock not remotely fitted to the plate, no crown, 
no bearing, 3/0 pins in the new block, original wippens, 
tuning pin coils all over the place, new keytops with the keys 
filed out of square, etc, etc - and rather nicely refinished. 
In short, a standard dealer rebuild for this area except for 
the keytops having been filed at all. He'd had the rebuilder 
out four or five times with the complaint about the bass buzz, 
but it was never resolved to his satisfaction. The hammers 
(Abels, from the look of them) looked like they had been 
attacked by gerbils, which might not be that far off. Just off 
of the strike point, fore and aft, the felt was chewed out 
like the guy had picked at the surface of them with needles 
instead of stabbing them. They were like this through the 
entire scale. I'd love to talk to him to learn what he thought 
he was doing. Meanwhile, I didn't hear anything I'd call a 
buzz in the bass, but the "hand picked" hammers were still 
like rocks, and there was a lot of high partial clang through 
the whole piano. We had a long detailed discussion about the 
state of the piano, and alternative remedial approaches, and I 
went with the resulting triage plan.

I did some tuning, and a bunch of hammer stabbing, making a 
dozen passes from high shoulders across the strike point, 
bringing the thing down and evening out the damage. A 5000+ 
hole voicing later, the sound was pronounced to be 
considerably more tolerable ("Why didn't the other guy do 
this?", he asked...), and he said he'd called his "banker" , 
and she agreed to putting them on the list for rebuilding.

It's the long way around, I know, but the upshot is that a 
buzz is sometimes just a buzz, but sometimes not. Like 
clearing any other minefield, you have to dig a bit to disarm 
the thing. I find that the less I think about it beforehand, 
the more flexible and receptive I am when I get there, and I'm 
horrified for shorter overall periods.

Give us the postmortem when you get back.
Ron N