<HTML>In a message dated 12/9/2= 001 1:43:21 PM Pacific Standard Time, Erwinspiano writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Subj:Fwd: Piano wire qua= lity Date:12/9/2001 1:43:21 PM Pacific Standard Time From:<A HREF="mailto:Erwinspiano">Erwinspiano</A> To:<A HREF="mailto:pianotech@ptj.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> ----------------- Forwarded Message: Subj:Re: Piano wire quality Date:12/9/2001 5:17:49 AM Pacific Standard Time From:    JD@Pianomaker.co.uk (John Delacour) To:    Erwinspiano@aol.com At 2:48 AM -0500 12/9/01, Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote: >            &= nbsp;    JD > >            &= nbsp; I was wondering your opinion on the quality of music >wire and how that has changed over time. Also I'd like to know the >specific differences and if those can be analyzed why can't we >prevail on some maker to manufacture it. When I started in the trade we had a choice.  There was English wir= e, which was very well polished but far too brittle and probably bad in all sorts of ways -- at any rate it was impossible to twist eyes on it because they just snapped.  I never used English wire.  Som= e suppliers still had a small stock of Poehlmann wire but really the choice was between Giese and Röslau  either plated or polished. &= nbsp;I hate plated wire and have never used it, but I used Giese in preference to Röslau because it was much better polished and had better colour. >        The reason I ask is that = I, m curious to know if you have any >recommendations or favorite wire. The frustration is that sometimes >we (I) as rebuilders will change music wire on say a very well >preserved stwy,Mason or whatever and find that the quality of the >plain wire doesn't really sound as lively and tonally satisfying as >the stuff just taken off. Yes.  Already when I began in trade, Poehlmann had folded, absorbed= by Röslau I believe, but I have no details.  I was very frustrate= d when a few years later, Giese folded, giving Röslau the monopoly. According to my friend Richard Gardner, who is 10 years older than me and was apprenticed to Steinway London long ago (a very good rebuilder and technician), Röslau, probably just about this time, thought they could save some money by stopping making the proper piano-wire alloy and use the same slloy that they use for ploughshares.  It was simply too much trouble to make small quantities (nowadays) of the special steel. When I was forced to change to Röslau, I noticed the difference straight away.  This was before I made bass strings.  The wire= was not well polished and often I had to through a coil out because it was grey or black or pitted or of bad consistency.  The plain wire never looked the same as with the Giese; it has a cheap tinselly look with not enough nickel colour. >  Also Often I have found Many scales set at tensions that Most= bass >and string scale designers will say is to high but nevertheless here= >is this piano 80 years later with the string scale that wasn't >supposed to survive and it has anyway and flying in the face of the >wisdom of this present day. I told the story of the first set of bass strings I made -- a set of Blüthner Style 7  (like yours) for two different customers. &nbsp= ;From the beginning I had my Multiplan spreadsheet to do the calculations, but I had no experience and was using breaking strain lists for Giese wire.  Besides, I was not sure of the exact percentage of strain th= at I should use as a maximum.  Of course, it was my first commercial stringmaking work and I wanted to make an impression.  The tensions= of the original scale seemed OK and I was very familiar with this model, so I stuck as close as possible to the original scaling principles, presuming that Blüthner knew what he was at.  The two= top singles broke in both sets.  Blüthner had used Poehlmann wire, as= did all the best German makers except for Steinway, who used an inferior American wire. Read Dolge and look at the breaking strains Poehlmann achieved in the grand age in competition with all the others.  The figures are astounding!  Makers were demanding this, because there was a feelin= g that since higher tensions had so far led to a steady rise in the quality of piano tone, the higher it was, the better the tone.  Not= every maker believed this and we find no excessive tension on Bechstein (a "sensible" scaler) or Lipp, who to my mind was the very best.  On the other hand Schiedmayer and many of the eastern makers= used the increased strength of the moden wire to build very high tensions into some or all of the scale.  I keep a Schiedmayer triple-covered string as a souvenir; it is over 11 mm thick!  The s= et I made to replace that set, even after my mods, weighed 4.75 kilograms. I find that in the end -- after 80 years or so of normal use -- even these Poehlmann strings will break when excessive tensions were designed, but Röslau equivalents will break before they come to pitch at the first chipping up. >  I once installed at set of Bass strings on 20's stwy L and wa= s >displeased with the sound on notes 24.25, &26. I had measured th= e >diameters and the new ones were not so. The string maker stated that= >the tension on those notes were at 70% of breaking strength so they >were scaled back. I had him make the original tension replacements >and installed them and success. That was 8 years ago and there >sounding great and have not broken 70% is my maximum and I would use it only for the thinnest covered strings on some pianos.  Your man was right and I do the same with the top bichords of most Steinway models, not to speak of Yamaha, whose scales are awful. >  The sound I'm describing in plain wire is a free well balance= d >sound that is easily set in motion with a light pluck. That is >subjective I know but that's my computer description. Yes, I know just what you mean.  I have a 1912 Lipp upright beside = me with the original strings and pins (tight as you like) and you only need to touch the strings to get a lovely pure sound. Two years ago I was invited to teach for two weeks in a college in Norway, and there I discovered some packets of a wire I had not heard of, though they were using Röslau by then.  I looked at it and it= had a good polish and a good feel.  I began to run down my stock of Röslau and finally sent a large order to this other firm in Germany. I use this wire now for all plain wire strings and most covered strings.  Unfortunately the sizes from 23 upwards are a bit too har= d for eyes and will break when twisted, so I am forced to use Röslau for some low notes. I prefer the new wire, but it is not Poehlmann and never will be.  = I have spoken to a very old English maker about analysing and remanufacturing Poehlmann wire and he was quite interested in the idea, but other things took precedence and I have not pursued the matter.  As you say, it is possible to analyse the alloy, but that = is only a part of the solution.  How the wire is drawn and annealed is= just as critical, and a lot of research would be needed to retrieve the lost art of Poehlmann. >I am curious as to your opinion of the pure sound wire as well. The >list has done some discussion of this before but I don't recall you >being in on it. I'm a newcomer and not a very welcome newcomer to certain people.  = A lot of humbug reaches the list masquerading as gospel and I am not so green as to be fooled by it.  When it comes to bass strings, I need= very little guidance from people who have never actually made a bass string let alone made thousands of sets of replacements and learned something new every week for 15 years in the process.  I always wan= t to learn more and even further improve my work, but we gain an extraordinary intuition from experience and lots of mistakes and experiments, provided we don't become complacent, and there is no substitute for this intuition. I have no experience of Japanese or American wire.  I would not be surprised if the Japanese eventually produce a wire that is better, as they already produce better pianos than the Germans in my opinion (NOT Yamaha!). All the best, John </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>