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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have a Yamaha grand which I service =
regularly and
over the years has had many broken strings, mainly bass. This is a =
gospel
church with enthusiastic pianists. When I first started servicing =
it there
were several replacement universal strings already on it so for a while =
I
continued with that practice until there were so many universals in the =
bass the
it was unrecognizable and untunable. I then talked the church into =
a
complete bass restring. I also filed and tone regulated the =
hammers which
were somewhat hard. About 4 months later I got a call that a =
string had
broken. Before I got there the second string of that unison had =
broken
also. Here's the strange thing I found and don't understand. =
Previously when a string in the bass broke it broke at the =
agraffe. This
time both strings broke in the speaking lenght just beyond the =
agraffe.
When I removed the coils from the tuning pins to install two newly made =
exact
matches this time, I found that the wire of both of the broken =
strings had
a noticable nick in it right where it passed through the agraffe. =
Not just
a bend, a nick. I could catch my fingernail in it. I don't =
know what
this means. How can a brass agraffe cause a nick in hard steel =
wire?
And what implication does that have about the breakage? Even if =
the
agraffe has a bad surface where the string passes through I don't see =
this
happening. I called Schaff and talked to the string department and =
the
person I spoke with had no idea. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Bad core wire maybe? But could it =
be that
soft? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Weigh in.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>