M&H Screw Stringer

[Fenton Murray]

List,
After 30 years of tuning I'm taking care of my first Screw Stringer, I've seen a couple but I don't think I've ever tried to tune one. I serviced this piano the other day, a mid 1890's M&H A Grand Piano, I managed to effect a couple of stringing repairs with misc. parts found in the bench and tuned the piano with the tool which was also present. This is a great piano that should give good service in the hands of a technician that knows a little about the unusuall string and tuning arrangement. Not really knowing how to proceed I immediatly found myself tuning this piano like a guitar, backing off the machine head and bringing the string just up to pitch and stopping. Any lowering of pitch needs perhaps a 1/4 to1/2 turn of the 'pin' to effect any pitch change, then I would let it down 3 or 4 beats before taking the slack out and coming back to pitch. This was all done based on nothing more than an intuitive approach and what seemed to work. I'm going back to touch up the string repairs and re-tune the piano. Hopefully armed with knowledge from someone out there with experience.
Also, anyone know how many and when these were made, they must be extremely rare, either that or the central coast just didn't get it's fair share.
Fenton
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