Did this thread just die? Are services planned? Maybe our knowledge of this area of pianos is too limited to sustain a larger conversation. I for one am very interested in the subject since broken treble wire is a constant here. How many companies make piano wire? It seems that rather than keep the same old processes like some other manufactures in our business they have retrogressed. Anything anyone knows about piano wire, sources for better piano wire, etc. I'd love to hear. dave David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of A440A at aol.com Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 10:13 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: down to the wire Greetings, I suppose I have been looking around for some heresy, lately. The temperament cauldron is simmering on a back burner, periodically boiling over in harmonic sizzles. Some of us just have to tend to it, others ignore it, many are not even in the kitchen, but acknowledge the occasinal burst of steam and flavors, (along with the shouting and banging of pots and kettles). But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to hear what others had to say about wire. Old wire. Wire that has been played near the extreme limits. I have two examples: 1. I recently examined a 1917 Steinway M. Totally alligatored case. I mean it. One of the most profound alligatoring I have ever seen, and very few dints, anywhere. Not a single broken string in it. It had been in a teacher's studio for decades and used for all day, most every day. It had been regulated once in its lifetime, hammers had 1 inch long flat spots and almost no felt covering the underfelt or core. It played like a truck, and the sound was like listening to rocks swimming in oatmeal. Wear and verdegris were competing for attention anywhere you looked. The owner is looking for maximum musical performance, so I suggested that she replace everything in the action, except for the keys, key frame, and action rails. Go all the way from the pedals to the damper heads. And don't touch the stringing. Even with the refinishing, don't restring it. She agreed. This was after she had played approx. 18 Steinway grands I have rebuilt or regulated, (one advantage of being a CAUT). 2. I lease a 1914 model O to the Nashville Jazz Workshop. It lives in mild victorian temperament,(oohh, a little hiss on the back burner...). One Steinway artist said she had never had a bad night on that piano, and it is generally looked on with great favor. I have two actions for it, and pieced it together out of two pianos, with legs and lyre and stuff from one on the body of the other. Well known jazz pianists have played this piano and like it. I have seen some of the younger ones hit this piano, really hard. It has the original wire in it. While the idea of fully rebuilding both of these with new pinblocks and wire is appealing,(the boards are nice and alive, which I find in about 1 out of 7 Steinways over 80 years old), I don't know that it would be a musical improvement. Both of these pianos sound really good and are almost free of false beats. Nice bridges and the pinblocks are also very tunable with original pins in them. In short, they sound great with a new hammer under them, so I am wondering what it to be gained. It can always be done later without undoing the work being done now. What strikes me is that the plain wire on these pianos is superior to what is being used today. That it is, for all purposes, unbreakable, and produces such a consistantly nice musical tone, baffles me. How could steel making not be better today than it was during World War I ? I service quite a few modern pianos in heavy use. They break strings and they have an enormously larger number of false beats. While bridge notching and pinning and Capo bar condition are each a large factor in this, the wire itself creates the quality of the note. I have had metallurgists tell me that the contamination of metals is a problem everywhere, as recycled metals get mixed, to a degree, and purity is expensive. And most of the steel in this country is made from recycling scrap. But music wire??? Anybody privy to the standards for metal used as music wire today? Regards, Ed Foote RPT<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See what's new at http://www.aol.com</HTML>
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