Failed string splicing -- charge for time?

[Fenton Murray]

John,
Maybe this has been pointed out already but in my experience many P22s and broken bass strings go together like red beans and rice. Poorly scaled in the bass, these pianos have had scale re-designs done and are available. I think Yamaha has a new scale as well as some of the bass string manufacturers. I have had a few of these with popping bass strings that I have fixed with a new set of rescaled bass strings. Of course you could do this re-scaling yourself but these sets are available off the shelf and seem to work fine.
Fenton
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ed Sutton 
  To: John Formsma ; Pianotech List 
  Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 4:29 PM
  Subject: Re: Failed string splicing -- charge for time?


  John-

  Good hypothesis that something may have been binding under the pressure bar. When raising pitch, the section by the tuning pin will be under greater tension than the speaking length. There will always be some friction under the pressure bar.

  Also consider that different manufacturers' wires will have somewhat different breaking tensions. I can't think of any reason not to go up to a .040 leader in this case. (Larger diameter will be stronger.) 

  The technique of splicing a wound string at the top of the winding, in the speaking length, works remarkably well, and would give you a few more chances.

  When the original core wire breaks in the splice, there's probably no solution but replacing the string.

  Should you charge? I'll leave that to better business minds than mine.

  Best regards,
  Ed
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: John Formsma 
    To: Ed Sutton ; Pianotech List 
    Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 6:53 PM
    Subject: Re: Failed string splicing -- charge for time?


    On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Ed Sutton <ed440 at mindspring.com> wrote:

      John-

      In this situation you could have used a larger diameter leader.
      I wonder if something in your splice technique is making a ding in the wire.
      Were you splicing in the speaking length, or above the top bearing bar pin?

      Ed Sutton


    Ed, 


    The first time, I used a larger diameter leader. The second time, I used the same size as the original core.


    I don't think anything that I did would have made a ding in the wire -- at least not where it broke. The splice was in between the pressure bar and the tuning pin.


    And regarding your subsequent e-mail, it was the leader wire that broke each time. The original wire and splice loop were obviously fine, since neither broke. :-)  Usually, it's the other way around when I do it -- the original wire breaks, and the leader wire is fine.


    You could see small indentions in the V-bar, but it looked normal. So I don't think the string was impeded by anything that might cause it to break under tension.  (I couldn't feel the back side of the pressure bar.)

    -- 
    JF
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