[CAUT] Advice for achieving stability sooner?

[Jeff Tanner]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu>
> When I had a Baldwin loan program, I found it was definitely true of  both 
> grands and uprights (you could almost always pound flat by 25  cents of 
> more, especially high treble, after a string and pin was  otherwise 
> seemingly stable). I assumed that this pounding was making  more positive 
> bends at the various bearing points (there was next to  no friction at the 
> bearing points near the pin). I doubt very much  that there is a "generic" 
> difference in this respect between Asian and  American. There are often 
> big differences in what happened between  initial stringing in the factory 
> and the first tuning we do on them.  Lots of variables, from how high the 
> initial tuning is overpulled  (lots of pianos come in 25-50 cents sharp), 
> to how many chippings and  tunings, to how long a period of time between 
> point X in manufacture  and delivery, to how long they stay on a dealer's 
> floor and what  happens there, etc.
> Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> University of New Mexico
> fssturm at unm.edu

After I hit send the other day, the Baldwin thing occurred to me as well. I 
had mid-nineties vintage Baldwins at USC, and you could always pound them 
down. I never figured that out. It seemed with the Baldwins there was no 
bottom. The more you pound, the lower it would go and keep going, and 
consequently, I could never get the tuning stabilized on them the way I feel 
I can with a Steinway even after years in practice rooms. I've never run 
into the same problem with Steinways, unless a wire was replaced with 
something besides Mapes. Seems like Mapes wire gets to its elastic limit 
faster than others I've used, and I have no idea why I would percieve that 
that might be so other than it just seems to be that way. (I'd always used 
everything else the supply houses sold before I started ordering Mapes wire 
just in the last few years) But now, with the Asian pianos, I don't remember 
having to deal with it more than once.  Because one time seemed to be 
enough, I've always assumed it might have something to do with the wire 
alloy, but that's an ignorant guess.  I did have one piano recently go sharp 
when I pounded. A Chinese made Story and Clark. I found the pitch 40-50 
cents high in the treble, tuned down to around pitch or below, and you could 
hear the wire spring back sharper than before as you tried to bring in the 
unisons. A mystery I never understood unless really poor rendering was the 
cause. I worked with that treble section for an hour and finally gave up.
Jeff