String breakage, drifting sharp

[Fred S. Sturm]

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    When I first got the "sharp test blow" religion, maybe 15 years ago,
I tried it out on a concert grand. Boy, was I impressed by how far those
high treble notes were falling. I was sure that I had always left the
piano _way_ unstable. Got done with the tuning and checked it out, and
was shocked to find that the top two octaves had drifted considerably
sharp, and the unisons I had sweated so much over were gone, too.
    More recently, since using an ETD, I have often noted, mostly in the
top half octave, that notes will be consistently a couple cents sharp. A
few not so terribly hard blows and they come right down to pitch. Then,
the day after or a week after or whenever I next see the piano, I find
the same phenomenon.
    Stability is a very amorphous thing. Of course, it depends a lot on
how much friction there is in the capo (or often between string and felt
in the agraffe section). I don't think it's possible to leave a piano in
such a stable tuning condition that "savagely hard" playing won't have
an effect. Not that I don't keep trying.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico

Mark Cramer wrote:
>snip<

> BTW, after the tendonitis, I used a striker for a while, still with a
> good blow. Though easier on the body parts, but found the capo
> sections would tend to drift sharp, and this is a discussion in
> itself.>snip<Mark Cramer,Brandon University

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