String Levelling

[Bill Ballard]

On  Fri, 03 Apr 1998 John Woodrow <woodroj@syvax.email.dupont.com> wrote:
>However, I am still struggling with (a) HOW TO DETERMINE LEVEL, and (b)
>does it really matter in a VERTICAL at any time other than after fitting
>new or reshaping hammers.

b.) Actually the same priniciple works in the grand as with the upright.
What's relevent is if we approach the upright wioth the same principles as
the grand.  It matters any time we seriously listen to piano sound. You can
listen to the sound of each string in a trichord (being careful, natch',
not to upset the level of the trio in your muting of the other two). Even
though the string cuts will necessarily (and undeniably) bring the impact
time of a level hammer on unlevel strings together, the higher strings (as
in a grand) will be struck with a shorter string cut. Exactly how the
rebound of the hammer is being affected by the fact that each string is
being hit by  surfaces with different extents of flatness, I don't know.
Fortunately there are plenty of engineering degrees on this list.

But, string by string, the difference is there to be heard. And while we're
hearing differences, wouldn't you much rather be hearing the sound of
strings being hit by curved rather than flat surfaces?


>Clair Davies talks about using the end of a steel rule to mute the unison
>to determine string level.
>How exact is feeling the height with your fingers?

Not enough for my purposes. I wouldn't even trust the end of a steel rule,
or the polished butt-end of the small brass bar in JerryAnderson's (?, the
Steinway tech from Paris who was talking about this a year ago) tool box.
Certainly such short straightedges could indicate when there strings were
in a straight line,  (As could an experienced finger tip), but it would
tell you nothing about whether that straight line was parallel to whatever
line you might have used to check the squareness of hammers at the end  of
a filing. Strings leveled within their own trichord, hammers dressed level
to some other lien. If these two lines aren't parallel, you'll still have
open strings.

Don't forget that given the congenital curved nature of music wire, you'll
want to be establishing that level at exactly the spot where hammer meets
string. Has anybody slid an action back in, wondered where all the fresh
and meticulous open string work went to, remembered you'd forgetten to put
the key blocks in, and had all that string leveling miraculously reappear.
It doesn't take more than a few thsouanths of an inch of open string to
cause the sound  you're trying to get rid of, and you don't have to slide
the action too far away from the keyblocks's location of the strike line to
create that few mils of out-of-level. Trust me, I used to do this leveling
with a dial indicator (--boy did I ever mispend my youth!)

"Richard Moody" <remoody@easnet.net> asks, Sun, 5 Apr:
>Why should we be concerned now, when we weren't in the past?

To quote Tommy Lee Jones to the prospective job applicant Wil Smith, in the
movie "Men In Black: "Think of what you'll know tomorrow."

>If you level strings, can I hear the difference before and after?

Once you hear it you'll never be able to avoid it.

>If the wire is elastic, how can bending it to make it level, last for
>
>any length of time?

You might ask the same question of the rep lever spring. They're both of
elastic material which exert a restoring force when deformed slowly
(relatively) but which can be permanently reshaped when pried abruptly
against a static corner (in the case of the string, the termination point),

>In manipulating the wire to make it level, is there a risk of kinking it
>which might be detrimental to the harmonic profile?

How brave, the first man to eat an oyster! We piano technicians have a fear
of the unknown, and a great imagination of what might lay out there. Some
of us doing piano work are blessed with engineering degress, most of us
have to toil in ignorance. (I barely made it through High School).
Fortunately, there is some of the sophisticated electronic equipment with
which to persue such questions rigorously. How 'bout someone with an RTC do
that little science project.

Or we could trust our ears. Someone watching me level strings asked, if I
wasn't inducing a field of false beats in what was til then brand new wire.
(Pat Barron of NYC actuially, in 1989.) I hadn't stopped to notice before,
but I sure did for the rest of the afternoon. No, the strings were just as
straight-sounding before as afterwards.

>The history student asks, What are the primary sources on this subject?

Add to your bibliography my article in the 10/89 PTJ on the relationship of
string leveling and the una corda. The latter will sound lousy without the
former, and the latter (along with the sostenuto) is also your best tool
for socking in the former.

>Is string leveling a concern of the manufacturer, and re-stringer?

It's the concern of anyone doing a voicing. If it only had to be done once
(during the final stages of a stringing), we wouldn't be having this
conversation.

> why haven't we heard of string leveling before?

It's been around. My  first demonstration of it was by Steve Jellen at the
New England Regional Seminar '74 at Pratt, Read. Cliff Geers would refer to
it in stringing classes, calling it the responsibily of the stringer. In
the factories, they would use the broad blade of a big screwdriver to pry
up (and down) using aggraphes & neighboring strings as fulcrums, and
reading the results with a finger tip. Franz Mohr always called it "open
string work", and I've always understood it to be part of the Steinway
approach to good piano sound.

On Sun, 05 Apr, Susan Kline <skline@proaxis.com> wrote:

>Since we seem to be talking about less than perfect situations, where there
>isn't time to do everything right, we are straying towards my "junk" area,
>so I will opine:
>
>When the two steps work with each other, and there is time for either one
>but not both, split the process a different way: do both, but start with
>the worst notes and continue on to the less egregiously offensive, until
>the time is up. Leave the rest till your next visit, if next visit there
>will be.

Triage. Actualy, I'd sort it out diffently. Good vocing is based on hammer
filing and open string work (in that order, according to my practice.) If
time and money force you to choose between either the voicing will not be
as good (politely put). But as Susan so ably teaches us, work compromised
by a shortfall of either time or money is still better than no work
performed at all.


 JIMRPT <JIMRPT@aol.com> wrote, Sun, 5 Apr:
>How long does it take to do a first class job of string leveling? How long
>you got? I've never been truly satisfied.   How long does it take to voice
>hammers individually, contiguously, consecutively, chordally, etc.?  How long
>you got?.... again I've never been truly satisfied.

Keep in mind Jim Coleman's contribution to last August's discussion of
this, that if if you are doing  high-shoulder or crown needling on a
hot-pressed hammer, the felt in these areas wil "welt up" in reaction to
this. In this situation we have no doubt that it's the hammer not the
string which is "unlevel". But there are many situations where the cuplrit
is less clear (and the need to apply the correction to the actual culprit,
no less strong). In one earlier PTech discussion (maybe summer of 95?) I
remember telling of pianist Anton Kuerti, who when he was in charge of the
voicing, would make all corrections to open strings by filing the hammer
crown. (He even told me of a little wire frame which could pass a strip of
sandpaper down through the strings and  do this crown filing with the
action in place.) I asked him, how did he like the una corda in pianos like
that, to which he replied "Oh, I never use the U.C. They all sound so
awful"  QED.

Again for those with memories of earlier discussions on this, it  was
impressive to note the number of people for whom string leveling was not a
part of routine voicing. One person in fact suggested that what those of us
talking about string voicing problems were hearing were actually string
termination problems. If you can hear it, do it.

Golly, there I backed the dump truck up and dropped the whole load in one
evening. Oh well, it's springtime and your gardens will need it.


Bill Ballard, RPT
New Hampshire Chapter, PTG

"When writing a mental note, first procure a mental piece of paper"
............mental graffitti