Good morning everyone, Whenever I came across an old upright or grand that needed a pitch raise with rusted strings/pins, etc, I would alway notify the client before I began that there's a chance that a string or two may break during the pitch raise process. However, recently, I had several treble strings break on a Kimball console, several treble strings break on a Schimmel grand, and a bass string on a Baldwin, and several more treble strings on a spinet. I say this because each of those pianos I just listed showed no signs of string breakage, before I began. I guess I was a little surprised. Anyway, after those experiences, I now make it a point everytime I encounter a pitch raise, regardless of the piano, to let the customer know before I begin that a string or two might break. I also briefly explain to them why it could happen, along with the pitch raising process. Now, when I am the phone with the client before I schedule the appointment, I let them know about a possible pitch raise, but I don't let them know about possible string breakage until I see them face to face. That's just me. I always feel better when I let them before I begin, rather than not, and then a string does break, and then you may be left with some explaining. When I pitch raise, I do the bass first. I just do mainly cause an RPT told me that your tuning will be more stable doing the bass first. I have never personally tested this myself. After the bass, what I used to do was then proceed pitch raising one string out of each note all the way up the piano, then on the way down, do the unisons. However, the last few weeks I have tried something different. Instead of pitch raising one string all the way to the top, I did this: After I pitch raised the bass, I then focused on each individual section, i.e., I would pitch raise one string in the entire tenor section, then go back and pitch raise the unisons in that section. Then do the same thing in the treble, and finally, the extreme treble. I don't know if it is just me, but I found when I finished the pitch raise with that method, the pitch was much closer and more stable than how I did the pitch raise before. Comments anyone? Matthew -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091212/a150f8db/attachment-0001.htm>
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