Ron wrote: <<<<<Over pulling certainly can damage strings, but you do have well over 1/4 semitone leeway above pitch tension....>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Maybe today we do. Perhaps strings are better manufactured than 22 or so years ago when I was a student. However, I still think over pullng is a bad idea. If there is a slight manufacturing anomaly... let's say the wire thins at certain points.. the more you increase the tension, the more likely you are to cause the wire to thin there even further. And, as the great Dr. William Braid White states re false beats, (I'll quote again): "This beating arises through segments of the strings being unevenly strained, whereby the corresponding harmonics are thrown out of tune. Such uneven strain may be the result of a twist in the wire during stringing, or of UNEVEN THICKNESS OF THE WIRE." (p106) Does it seem logical to ever increase the tension of the wire any more than absolutely necessary if you are looking for the best results possible? Again, some of my "twisted" logic: If you won't buy that the likelyhood of false beats developing in a string increases with the degree of over pulling, will you at least agree that the less a string has been over pulled, the less likely the development of false beats? Also, (please don't make me source this too <GRIN>) isn't it true that plain wire is drawn accurate to plus or minus 1/10,000 on an inch. It would seem (to me, at least), that the higher the note, the thinner the wire, the more careful we need to be. <<<<.... if the tension at pitch isn't designed at significantly over 60% of breaking point.>>>>> Maybe, if. <<<<< It's certainly possible that factory chippers could damage strings by over pulling, but it's much more likely that the piano's potential was far more damaged during the design, fabrication and assembly stages than in the tuning stage. There seems to be a whole bunch of ways during the production process to mess up what could just as easily have been a nice piano with a little care and adherence to design specs. That's assuming of course that the design was workable in the first place. There's more than a little evidence that this happens with some frequency.>>>> If I gave the impression that I thought that stringing methods were the only POSSIBLE factor involved in creating false beats... well... I shouldn't have. I actually do know better. I was simply trying to point out that this is a possible variable, an that it's very easy to control. (Especially with today's VTDs.) Ron, I wish you and yours the very best. I'm going back to the holiday. -Joe
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