Mike Although some of the string breakage can be attributed to weak strings, the flat hammers, and the majority of broken string,?are?caused by the player, who has a very heavy hand, and probably plays a lot with his/her foot on the right pedal. Since the?problems?are at two high schools,?I would suspect that the same player?is playing at both schools. (traveling music teacher).?Even if you can get the school to pay for new hammers and a complete regulation, (as per Don's suggestion). the string breakage problem won't go away until the player is either replaced, too, or at least educated on how to play without banging. Just my 2 cents worth.? Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Mike Erickson <merick1948 at yahoo.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 11:28 am Subject: [pianotech] Pianos that have frequent broken strings Only a few particular pianos come to mind (over the last 28 years).?? The latest is a 1960?? about 6'3" Knabe grand on a high school stage (plus it's twin at another high school) ? The strings rarely bust during a tuning, but sometime inbetween tunings. Since January 2006, 3 wound strings have broken, and 12 treble strings, all terminate and break under the de cappo bar,? and most in the 2 highest octaves. ? The breakage is accelerating.? It does get played quite a bit.? Mirror inspection of the decappo termination shows a little nitch (which I have been lightly filing at each replacement) and a fairly defined point (as opposed to a more rounded termination point). ? I don't know how much the flattened & grooved hammers are contributing.? Monies have been tight over the last decade, and maintenance beyond tuning and obvious repairs has been put aside.? In the upper two octaves,? rounding the flattenened hammers would bring the stike point maybe 1/16" to 1/8" from the inner felt, in-other-words, it would probably be the last shaping the hammers could receive before cutting through the white felt. ? Has anyone have a significant improvement in curtailing frequent string breakage with simply hammer shaping/voicing???? ? I'm sure this beatup instrument is ready for replacement or at least rebuild, but if any of you have already been experiencing a similar story on this era of Aeolian built Knabe, I would appreciate knowing if anything you tried, helped out temporarily,? or if nothing worked. ? I've also encountered "string busting pianos"? that were much younger than this.? An 80s Kimball console,?? ( 2) 1985 Young Chang grands, 1987 Wurlitzer studio (even my replacements bust within a year or two) , and to a lesser degree a couple of older Yamaha consoles. ? Any shared experiences appreciated, ? Mike, Tucson Arizona -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090203/9afc9152/attachment-0001.html>
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