[CAUT] pin tightness

[William Schneider]

Hi Wim

If the pin is really too loose to hold, continuous heavy blows to the key
would likely make the pitch go down, down, down. You can try putting a
tuning hammer on the pin and flicking the pin flatwise (not too hard) with
the back of the hand during the test, just to be sure. If it stabilizes not
too far from the correct pitch you may have another problem.

Other problems may include a hammer shank wobble, causing the string in
question not to get a good test blow during tuning even though spacing seems
ok (this applies usually to strings on outsides of unisons). If the string
has rendering issues you may have to use much harder test blows to stabilize
it during tuning than you might think. A little ProTek on the agraffe or
capo may alleviate rendering problems just enough to get stability.

There certainly are such things as loose tuning pins, but, in my experience,
pins that aren't absolutely obviously loose will hold given well aligned and
firmly pinned hammer shanks and an enthusiastic tuning technique.

By the way, I am of the hard-test-blow persuasion (advisedly, I think) for
all tuning. 

Bill Schneider 



-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Willem
Blees
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 4:00 PM
To: CAUT
Subject: [CAUT] pin tightness

Does a marginally loose tunig pin cause the string to go out of tune 
during heavy playing? On the D in the concert hall, I had to replace a 
pin that was damaged during the vandalism 4 years ago. The string has 
long since stretched, but it goes out of tune too much, especially 
during heavy playing. The pin has probably about 35" - 40" pounds on 
it. (I haven't measured it, but that is what it feels like). 

Comments, opinions.

Wim
Willem Blees, RPT
Piano Tuner/Technician
School of Music
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL USA