About treble string breakage: Although voicing helps, in our piano major practice rooms we still have a good bit of treble string breakage after the pianos have been in service for a some years. They almost always break at the capo, so I splice rather than replace whenever possible. This cuts down on the re-tune trips considerably. I have followed some of these instruments for more than twenty years, and the spliced strings last as long as the replaced ones. The knot in the front duplex DOES change the tone slightly, but it's an acceptable price to pay for the tuning stability. Because of the "youth" of the rest of the strings, I thought it reasonable to replace the top two sections on a couple of the pianos, and that has stopped the breakage for three years now. I thought replacing the top two octaves would look funny, and doing whole sections gives easier access to the capo to dress it. In another post someone asked how to go about it. There is no need to replace the pins, if they are reasonably tight, but since I haven't seen a warning not to unwind them three turns and wind on the new wire, please consider this such a warning. I removed all the strings in one section at a time by unwinding the pins a little less than three-quarters of a turn, then popping the beckets with a pair of needle-nose pliers and lifting the strings off. Replacement is just like individual string replacement, with two and a three-quarters coils wound onto a dummy pin (a small pin is good), then taken off the dummy and placed onto the pin. Turn it to whereever you usually do in a replacement (I use about eight o'clock), then pull the wire through the bridge pins, around the hitch pin, through the bridge pins, and back to the other tuning pin. Use whatever measurement standard that works for you, cut the wire, and place it onto the dummy pin. Put on two and a half wraps or whatever, and transfer it to the second tuning pin. Pull some tension on the first side (with the coil lifter under the coil), then do the same to the other side. I then pull the string right up to pitch. This way I can keep track of how I'm doing with cutting to length. If you are uneasy letting down a whole section at once, do whatever you're comfortable with, but I have no concern about pulling the strings right up to pitch, and it makes it easier to keep the coils neat. There is no reason this can't match the original stringing exactly, except for the shiny wire. I'm not going to say too much about time, because each person is different, but I can say that this is cost-effective and with practice shouldn't take more than a few hours. Cheers, Bob Davis University of the Pacific
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