Everyday somthing new

[Gevaert Pierre]

Dunce of the year?
Here is mine.
Note, I was a beginning pianotechnician.
I wanted to please a client and cleaned de bas strings of her fine quality
upright with metal polish.
Result: the previously nice sounding basstrings where completely death!
Another tech said that the only way to cure the problem was to replace the
whole set, so that is what I did.
Maybe there is another possibility? I dont know.

Regards
P. Gevaert
Belgium
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Pillmore" <billpillmore@earthlink.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 10:54 PM
Subject: Everyday somthing new


>
> Maybe someone can explain this.  I went to a customer today to give a
> second opinion on restringing the bass section of her 20 year old 5'1""
> Kawai grand.  What I found was the whole bass section was dead as a door
> nail.  My first inclination was the bass bridge was coming unglued but
> there was no indication of this. (The bass bridge where it is glued is
> mostly under the plate and out of view.)  Putting pressure on the bass
> bridge seemed to show it was intact.  The customer said after a normal
> tuning from her regular tuner, the strings seemed to go dead.  The
> technician after referring to a colleague twisted the strings and she
> thought they sounded better for a day or so but now he is saying the
> bass section needs to be restrung.  Although there is little bearing
> there is some.  I tuned down a string made sure it was seated on the
> bridge, messed around scratched my head, and retuned the string.  It
> bounced back to life and two or three other strings did the same.
> Before getting further involved I thought I might want to think about
> this for a day.  I have never seen anything like this before.  Any help?
> Bill
>