I wanted to thank all who contributed to a nice discussion about a month or so ago regarding false beats caused by loose bridge pins and fixing the pins with CA glue or epoxy. I was not fully aware of the relationship between false beats and loose bridge pins prior to that discussion. I am now - especially after last night. THANKS! I tuned an eight-year-old Samick grand (5' 8" or so) last night. Every note in the entire treble and hi-treble sections was WILD with false beats (yes, that's right - half the keyboard!). HORRIBLE false beats. Like I've never quite heard before. THE WORST IN THE WORLD! (Did I say they were bad?) I finally decided to put my eyeglasses on and grab my handy LED flashlight (woooow, so cool - and batteries haven't gone dead yet!) and checked out the bridge pins - sure 'nuf, you could see the gaps at the base of most of the pins and several notes had the wood cracked all along the three pins. Took my trusty old pliers and presses gently on a pin, struck the note, and walla! False beat completely gone. Check several others and the same thing happened. The customer was amazed - I tried to look like I knew it all along, but I was amazed also! A little pressure on the pin made the string go from the most horrible false beat in the world to a VERY clean sounding string. EVERY time! Being that there are cracks in this bridge, I told him I did not feel comfortable recommending CA. I suggested that epoxy would yield the best, most lasting results. I need to figure out how long this repair would take. Anyone care to estimate time required to loosen all strings in treble and hi-treble sections (tenor and bass are OK) and pop them off the hitch pins, remove old bridge pins, apply epoxy, set original pins back in (let set for 48 hours) reposition strings, bring up to pitch, level and seat strings, tune. I've done this in the shop, but never in a home in this manner. I also told him that if it looked like we could improve the notching, we would do that also. I have my own time estimate, but I tend to underestimate sometimes, and this is definitely a very different in-home repair for me. I hope that I can post in a month or two that I have completed a highly successful repair! Terry Farrell Piano Tuning & Service Tampa, Florida mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com
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