String breakage (& yamaha butts)

[Otto Keyes]

Just before Christmas I got a call from a lady who wanted her piano tuned up
before the kids got home for the holidays.  She said she thought it had a
broken string or two.  She didn't play it herself, but had a son coming home
who was quite good.  I pressed her a bit, & she thought there might be more
than two, with broken strings in the piano bench, so I said I would check it
out.  It was a Conn, or console of similar ilk, with the sharp kink over the
V-bar.  Indeed, there were a couple of broken bass strings in the
bench.....and 9-10 more laying in bottom of the piano.  At least
half-a-dozen bass strings had already been tied, & there were another half
dozen, or more, plain wires missing in the treble.  Looked like the
soundboard had attempted a breakout.

These days I figure there's only so much fun an old man can stand, so I
gently informed the customer that the money they would pay me would best be
applied to a new piano, and took my leave with a large sigh of relief.

By the way, does anybody have a dandy way to put new cord on Yamaha butt
flanges?  I've got some U-1s starting to break cords, so got some sets of
flanges & cord, figuring on replacing a set or two, & then putting the new
cord on the flanges, replacing some more, etc.  Unless I find a better way
to put the stuff on, I'm better off buying the sets of flanges, even though
they've about doubled in price.  Any ideas?

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lance Lafargue" <lancelafargue@bellsouth.net>
To: "'College and University Technicians'" <caut@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:57 AM
Subject: RE: String breakage


> This P-202 was within the last 5 years.  It may be called a P-22 now
(45").
> They were really banging on it.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: caut-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces@ptg.org]On Behalf Of
> Susan Kline
> Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2003 8:33 PM
> To: College and University Technicians
> Subject: RE: String breakage
>
>
> Yes, those early P202's did have troubles in the bass. Remember, it
> was just after they took over the Everett factory. After breaking
> two bass strings while tuning three very lightly used P202's at a
> school, I looked, and saw that the string approached the coil at a
> bad angle, so that it was trying to ride up where the coil first
> started, especially for the lowest row of pins.
>
> This was before they sent out rescaled strings, but they certainly
> got my attention by sending me a complete set of bass strings, gratis.
> Superb
> service -- if only the design had been as good as the service reps!
>
> It all seemed so needless -- if they could just have drilled the
> tuning pin holes so the pins leaned back at an angle, I doubt that
> they would have broken any wire to speak of.
>
> Susan
>
> At 11:07 AM 2/25/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >Lance wrote:
> > >Susan, my biggest string breaker was Macedonia Baptist Church with a
> Yamaha
> > >P-202 also.  Yamaha/dealer paid me to replace the bass strings with
> rescaled
> > >strings with heavier core wire.  They haven't broken any since.
> >
> >Susan, Lance,
> >My biggest string breaker was also a Yamaha P202.  Similar Baptist Church
> >setting.
> >
> >Yamaha told me to use the different scale bass strings as well, and sent
> >them to me.  Apparently, they keep records of frequency of string
breakage
> >for each string for each model.  The service rep could tell me which bass
> >strings had the highest occurrence of breakage.
> >Jeff
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
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