[pianotech] Was high and outside now silent pitch lowering

[Terry Farrell]

Yes, strings can break. You take precautions to minimize the chance. And then you raise pitch. On a 100 year old piano, I'll be hesitant to go with more than 30 cents or so overpull in the high treble.

I do a lot of pitch raises, and among 60-cent pitch raises on 100 or so year old pianos, I'd say that better than 90 percent are done without strings breaking. Sometimes you'll have one or two break, and sometimes they all just start popping - but not often.

I had a 1900 Everett grand in original worn & rusted to the nub condition in my shop a couple years ago. Just for fun I wrenched on a good number of tuning pins with the AccuTuner on to measure how high I could pull strings sharp before breaking. On this particular piano, in the tenor and treble, I was able to pull all of them 100 cents sharp without breaking and many went 200 cents without breaking. None made it to 300 cents.

If they break, and you lower pitch prior to pulling it up, then the string was weak to begin with - or the scale was horrible.

And anyway, starting about this time of year, it's too cold in Winnipeg to do anything anyway! Eat a big meal and hibernate until spring breaks!  ;-)

Terry Farrell

On Nov 1, 2012, at 3:08 PM, Carl wrote:

> I've been reading many, not all, of these (high and outside) posts for a couple of weeks now, and only
> one fellow brought up the possibility of broken strings on pitch raises. I 've had many pitch raise
> needs and always  worry about the possibility of breakeage.  I'm aware that a piano 10 or 15 years
> old can be raised without much worry, but many are considerably older, and look and feel like all
> the strings might break with an even 10 cent raise.  That's likely an exageration, but all you need is
> one string to break, and this adds considerable time to a tuning, plus other factors , such as cost
> for the extra work .  ????????
> 
> CT  - Winnipeg.