Sucessful string splicing, angry client.

[Leslie Bartlett]

This was a single man, so no kids involved. The tuning was relatively
consistent, so I wouldn't expect it had been tuned, rather than someone
attempting to tune himself. All the agraffe notes had "chinks" in them, so I
should have KNOWN it hadn't been tuned for some time, and should have just
knocked the strings way down and pulled through the chink.  It did leave
plenty of wire for splicing, though.................  The string was
probably less than an octave above the wound strings.  That's about all I
remember. I was so flustered with a string breaking (I don't suppose I've
replaced more than one string a year on average), it being a nice piano, and
then disturbed more and more as the top went further and further flat- way
too much to have been tuned within a year.  The guy said, upon questioning,
"Well it might have been longer. I just pulled that out of the
air."................   I've never had trouble with Schimmels before........
les

Les,

Can you tell me more about that Schimmel?

I replaced G#6 wire on a Schimmel grand--two years old, at no charge to the
customer, paid by the dealer.
Something  is wrong with that note that I couldn't figure in my first visit.
It seems that if the soft pedal is at rest, the hammer hits on the capo bar,
if the soft pedal is in use, hammer hits all three strings.  I looked at the
hammer line and it seems fine, G#6 hammer sits nicely in line with the
others, which don't have this problem.  It is also centered under the three
strings of the unison.

The piano is grossly out of tune, although customer claims they had it tuned
about 6 months ago. 

 The 14-year old son asked me dozens of intelligent, well thought-out
questions as I replaced the string.  When I finished, I asked him if he
would like to tune a string.  His response was immediate, positive and
happy, so I gave him a short lesson.

Some of the strings in a given unison were as much as 6 cents off from each
other, and I began to suspect that maybe he has tried tuning it already.  If
so,  I have heard much worse from beginning tuning students.  Since he and
his younger brother have been taking piano lessons for 10 and 4years
respectively now, I figure they need the Schimmel to be in good tune, so
offered to loan him a used practice piano, a tuning hammer,  and some
beginning lessons if he promises to practice tuning as much as he practices
playing.

I go back next week to retune the new string, and look closer at what is
happening to cause the hammer to block on the capo bar.  

Any ideas very welcome!
Diane