Jeff writes: << You don't mention restringing or pinblock health in your post, only action rebuilding. I assume you're also restringing these pianos? >> Umm, I believe that I did restring it, but will have to go over there and see. The school was a private academy in the 60's, got a number of donated pianos,etc. When we went to Vanderbilt in 1980, I went through the Peabody college inventory and picked out all the rebuild candidates. That was the beginning point for my restoration program. In the early years, there were piano budgets of unplannable size every other year, so I really had to hit the worst of the worst spots. The first job was an unplayable piano instead of any number of badly worn ones, because we needed another instrument. That meant sometimes I would leave the worn out, but regulated, action alone because the strings were a disaster and the pinblock had finally had enough. Interestingly, there were a number of pinblocks with the original pins and strings from the 20's that I restrung and they have done beautifully for the last 25 years with 3/0 X 2 1/2 pins. A good block is a durable one. If an instrument is singing, and some of the older ones do, (not ALL soundboards die, just most of them), I am real happy to leave the block in place if it feels like I want it to. I came to Nashville and ran right into the luthiers/bluegrass/guitar-setup wizards here. I was amazed at the respect they all held towards the acoustic integrity of instruments,ie, the "oneness" that is sometimes felt in an instrument, as though every single part of the instrument was equally charged with the sound it was producing. Some of these people could tell if a pre-war Martin guitar had the heavier Grover tuners retro-fitted on it by its sound. These people made much of entrainment principles in their instruments, going to great lengths to preserve as many of the original glue joints as possible. The thought is that the wood fibers, subjected to continual stress, gradually assume the most efficient state of tension and compression. At this state, the fibers most efficiently transmit energy, wasting as little as possible in heat. They change strings one at a time to minimize the change of stress in their instrument. ( I think entrainment is also pertinent to a discussion of what makes a responsive soundboard, but that is another big warehouse of speculation and various feckless experience.) This, of course, has little to do with piano soundboards, other than when the occasional piano shows up, after 75 years, with a soundboard that is really alive, I take great pains to get that plate back in with the exact same down-bearing picture as what it had. I don't feel the need to second guess the instrument. If it is a hot axe with a bad pinblock, my goal is to have it strung up with a new block with the least amount of change to the whole sounding structure. I do not know how to create that magical response in a board, but I know it when I hear it. I have dozens of restringing jobs on old blocks that are a joy to tune, decade after decade, and I wish there were more of them. Alas, I replace more blocks than I save. Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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