Tuning it where it is

[Mark Dierauf]

Bill Maxim wrote:

>I do a lot of pitch raises, but I tend to leave the pre-1930 uprights where
>they are unless I am convinced of the structural integrity.

  Bill -

 Can you be more specific? What might you look for in a pre-1930 upright
that would keep you from pitch-raising? In 20+ years most of the uprights
I've seen (probably 75 - 80%) have been pre-1930 and the only problems I've
ever had with pitch-raises are occasional broken strings. From your
message's wording I take it that you are refering to some other problem
arising from a lack of "structural integrity".
 I did once turn a job down tuning two older uprights (because of the
distance involved) only to find out that the tuner they ended up with had
the plate break on one of them during a pitch-raise. I felt sorry for the
poor SOB, and did my best to convince the customer that it almost certainly
wasn't his fault. But it made me wonder if perhaps it would be worth pulling
these older uprights out from the wall and having a close look at the
blocking around the bottom of the frame and between the backposts just to
make sure that the bottom of the plate was actually screwed to something
that wouldn't move. OTOH, I've probably tuned (& pitch-raised) scores of old
uprights that have lived their lives in damp basements or chicken coops
where I wouldn't give you 10 cents for the integrity of the bottom gluing
and not had a problem. On one that I remember, the customer specifically
warned me against pulling it out from the wall because the whole treble side
would fall off. It had been unglued ever since it had spent the winter
outside for a year while they worked on their house!
  The only plate I ever had break was on a piano that I had pitch-raised and
then tuned regularly for a couple of years. Then, about two weeks after a
tuning the customer called and said that one octave had gone "really sour".
When I came to see, the thing had broken in way of the hitch pins just above
the treble break. I also saw an old H F Miller from the late 1880's that had
a crack in the lower treble side of the plate, well below the hitch pins,
that had been repaired (apparently in the factory) by attaching a steel
plate from the back side with macine bolts threaded into the casting and
spanning the crack. I pitch-raised and tuned this piano without any problem.

- Mark