Hi, Joel! At 21:30 05/09/2003 -0500, you wrote: > I began by pounding the key and lowering each string about 1/2 turn >until it was slack. Continuing to test blow the key a dozen times while >slack and continuing pounding I then pulled the string up to pitch. > > Presto the string had a live, full sound. However, I'm wondering: > > 1. What happened to the string to cause it to revive??? You scared the **** out of the strings. They thought they were going to be "eliminated"... More exactly, you literally beat the **** out of them. I've done this to many upright and grand strings whose only deadening agent was decades of dust. >2. Will this be a short term fix and the strings become dead again??? They'll deaden again when they load up again with detritis. >Anybody experienced this bass string revival? Years ago, [at least ten] I did some "voicing" on a Welte grand with a very dead bunch of wound strings. The bass bridge was also shot, so full tone restoration was not possible. This piano has a number of trichord wound unisons, so what I did was to thump on all three for the top few, then two for the next and only one for several unisons. This way I "feathered" the tone from live plain to dead bridge wound. Voila! No abrupt change. The only caveat I would add is that many of these dead string pianos also have pinblocks which are about to give up the ghost and you may wind up with a live string which won't stay in tune - ;-{ YMMV
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