Doug Wood wrote: >Perhaps I'm turning the pins too fast when I'm taking the old strings out. >I'll have to try slower next time (hopefully not soon...). They end up >feeling as before restringing, but it seems to have taken months to "settle >down". Similar to the experiences I've had with the new pianos. Much harder >to tune in their first year, in large part because the tuning pins are >tighter. > Oh hey... I'll buy into this well enough. A newly restrung piano isnt going to hold nearly as well over weeks as a settled piano will. That said you can get them up and ready for a concert, and as long as we are not talking festival season or exams week with heavy usage, a full time CAUT should be able to find the needed time to keep them close enough so that an hours tuning before any subsequent concerts will do the job. We just pulled down the capo section of a Hamburg D a couple years back. In that week it was given new hammers and shanks, new strings, new bridge pins (same size as origionals but with a few drops of CA into the holes before insertion, and a capo redress. Strings started comming off on a monday and the following wednesday the instrument was in its new location and played on for the opening concert of a new concert location in town by one of the best classical players in Norway. The instrument held very nicely through the concert but by the end of the week was sour apples of course. Frequent tunings over the ensuing weeks brought it back into line nicely and it was used several times during that first few weeks without problem. Its a bit extra work to be sure tho. Cheers RicB >I'm referring specifically to Steinways here, both because they're >most of what I work on, and because I think it is part of how the Steinway >pinblock is supposed to work. They block seems to relax into the proper >feel, and even out the feel quite a bit over a year or so. A one-year-old >Steinway (properly maintained) is much more fun to tune than a new one!!! > > You sure got that right... I have a couple C's I do weekly sessions with and its almost like play time. >It has long been my habit to turn the pins only to where the becket points >at me, then wind a coil on a spare pin, etc. The total rotation is just >about 3/4 turn each way, most of the time. (Most of this is in individual >replacements, of course.) > >Doug Wood > > > Cheers RicB
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