Breaking strings...

[PDtek@aol.com]

In a message dated 98-07-02 21:35:52 EDT, you write:

> I'm a newbie at tuning and ran across this situation- I was tuning an
>  old (1920's) Edward Mason grand with the original strings. A quarter of
>  the way through, pop! broke a treble string. No problem, I need the
>  practice installing strings.Then pop!, another one.
>  Pop...pop...pop...all the way up to ten broken treble strings, five or
>  six notes apart, before I quit.  Yes, I used liquid wrench on the vbar
>  and agraffes.  My question is-  how many strings should one break before
>  declaring the piano untunable and in need of a restringing or
>  rebuilding.  The owner is only interested in having it "tuned."  Any
>  advice?
>  
>  Phil Ryan
>  Associate, PTG
>  pryan2@bellsouth.


2 or 3 is plenty, especially if after an initial inspection you can see
trouble lurking, like the presence of rust or evidence of past string repairs.
After some experience you can feel wire that is likely to break when tuning,
loss of elasticity that makes a string feel like it has gone as far as it will
go, raise it one more cent and it's gone.

If your customer only wants to pay for a tuning, give them the option of
tuning the piano low, then find the lowest part of the scale and drop the rest
down to that level.

I feel that it is important to warn any customer with a piano like this,
especially if it is low, that string breakage is a real possibility, and that
they will have to bear the cost of replacement, and then tell them how much
that would be per string.

They just may opt for the low tuning right off the bat. And the customer you
just described will like the tuning just fine. In other words, give them the
options, it's thier piano.

Dave Bunch