At 23:29 30/09/01 -0400, Newton Hunt wrote: >Yes, unwrapped ends do effect inharmonicity, inharmonicity increases by >the fourth power of the distance unwrapped. That being said, it is >difficult for most string makers to control the agraffe end closer than >two or three millimeters. I don't understand why you say that or why the agraffe end should be any more "difficult to control" than the other end. We work to a tolerance of less than a millimetre provided we are given a neatly taken rubbing to work from. Much production work in the past and now is of very poor quality -- if I were to describe how strings were made in England 20 years ago, you would hardly believe quite how poor. >In order for them to come out perfectly even you need a real gifted string >winder. Exact marking requires no gift, just proper care and attention to detail. It is a separate process from the winding, which certainly requires the same, plus experience and the "knack", which is gained by constant keeping of oneself up to the mark. The proper tightness of the copper cover is measurable by the reduction in diameter occasioned by the degree of tension applied to the cover. A new string-maker needs to be monitored very closely. Core x + cover y should give o/d z. If he/she is getting a smaller o/d, then the pull is too much and too great a diameter means the winding is too loosely applied. Even an experienced operative can for one reason or another veer off the ideal, though not significantly, and needs to make regular spot checks of the evenness and tightness of his covers. An experience operative will not vary during the course of making a set or even during the course of a day, but a general error can creep in over a period, rarely enough to affect quality. Illness or weakness due to age can, of course, deprive the stringmaker of the necessary strength to apply correct tension manually. Semi-automatic tensioning is possible and can be very exact, but there is no advantage if skilled operatives are available. >I would order a set of strings from the factory, either New York or >Hamburg. They will be wrapped to the factory specifications whereas if >you get a set made by someone else they will follow their own ideas of >string making. In the case of a Steinway "D" it is critical to get a >good set. Any string-maker ought to have details of the Steinway original specifications and be happy to work to these or to modify them, entirely according to the customer's wishes. As to the quality of NY strings, I have no idea. As to the quality of Hamburg strings, I have no further comment. JD
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