[pianotech] Slipping Becket

[Albert Picknell]

Hello David

Are these Diamond brand tuning pins?  We did a thread about this (which I started) a couple of years ago which was subsequently reproduced in the May 2010 Journal.  I've never had a becket slip with any other brand of tuning pin, and I'm convinced that the slippage had to do with the rounding at the opening of the becket holes.  The attached photo may make it clearer: the pins are, from left to right, Denro, Diamond, and Yamaha.

BTW, I'm not knocking Diamond brand tuning pins; I use them and quite like them.  But that slight rounding at the opening of the becket holes just means one has to be a little more careful to get a good sharp bend in the wire, and not put tension on a string with the becket protruding, which can put a slight bend in the becket, making it even more likely to slip.  Unfortunately, when a becket does slip out of the hole the rounding at the opening of the hole is made worse.

In a situation like the one you describe, I'd be inclined to go with Ron's suggestion.

My take,
Bert


--- On Fri, 1/27/12, David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>
> Subject: [pianotech] Slipping Becket
> To: pianotech at ptg.org
> Received: Friday, January 27, 2012, 3:11 PM
> I have an interesting problem with a
> Yamaha C7 c 1980.  Nickel pins.  There
> is one pin in which I can't get the becket to not slip and
> be pulled through
> the pin.  Interestingly I've tuned this piano many
> times.  At this most
> recent tuning I was going over the tuning and noticed that
> one unison (high
> treble) had slipped considerably.  My first thought was
> that I had for
> skipped it somehow in my sequence.  But as I pulled it
> up to pitch again it
> simply continued to slip back. I realized that the becket
> was moving so took
> off the string, cut off the old becket and reinserted the
> string with a
> longer becket.  This one slipped as well.  Since
> the string spanned two
> notes and was high up in the piano I decided to leave it
> until I could
> decide to either replace the tuning pin or figure out
> exactly why this was
> happening.  I've avoided nickel tuning pins for various
> reasons (mostly
> looks and tuning lever feel) when possible but haven't
> encountered something
> like this.  There is clearly something about the pin
> which is causing this
> to happen but I'm not sure exactly what that is. 
> Thoughts?  
> 
> David Love
> www.davidlovepianos.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Denro Diamond Yamaha 1.JPG
Type: image/pjpeg
Size: 369155 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20120127/61a34c44/attachment-0001.bin>