GH1 voicing revisited

[PNOTNR@aol.com]

In a message dated 97-01-13 08:11:18 EST, you write:

>.
>
>Randy Potter originally posted the info about this retrofit.  Has anyone
else
>done this?  I would be interested to know if the results are worth it
(better
>tone AND tuning stability), before suggesting it to a customer.
>
>Danny Dover, RPT
>Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Hi Danny and List,

I had wonderful success with the Yamaha GH1 conversion kit.   This was for a
customer who had been very dissapointed with many other technicians.  In fact
her husband had met me and the driveway and wished me luck dealing with his
wife!

At the time I knew very little about string tension and scaling,...not that I
know a lot more about it now, but it was clear that the low tenor was pretty
poor.

My first attempt was to replace a few strings with new wire (I thought that
the old wire might have been bad.)  That didn't work, in fact it got worse!

So I called Yamaha, and they told me about the GH1 kit.  I believe it
rescaled 5 trichords with bichords.  The kit included the strings, agraffes,
damper felt and was supposed to include hitch pins and a drill bit.  (all
provided free)  There was a screw-up with the kit for a while, because the
were sending bridge pins instead of hitch pins.  I think I wound up putting
two bass strings on one hitch pin because I didn't realize the pin mixup
until I was at the customers house.  So in this case I had a couple of
mismatched strings because the windings weren't ending up where the string
maker expected.

Even so, this was such an improvement, and the customer was so pleased that
she has not let me correct the hitch pin problem.

My memory is that it only took about two hours start to finish, plus a
recheck of the tuning a week later.  I find the tuning is quite stable now.

Gordon Large, RPT
Maine