The Stringer, etc, and spinet woes

[Mickey Kessler]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
Hi all,

First, I want to thank everybody who responded to my question about The 
Stringer.  As always, this group has wonderfully creative ways of solving 
problems.

Armed with a number of non-Stringer ideas, I went to replace the string 
yesterday.  The patient is an Everett drop-action, with an elaborate 
wooden-sticker arrangement -- more about that later.

It turned out that for me, in this case, the easiest thing to do was just 
thread the wire by hand.  I got it through below the action, got it looped 
around the hitch pin, put on a spring clamp to keep it there, and thought, 
hey, this isn't so bad.

And indeed it wasn't -- except for the little detail of getting the wire 
properly routed against the bridge pins.  Naturally, given my luck, the 
bridge for the notes in question is located directly opposite the 
keyboard.  As a result, it's nearly impossible to reach by mortal 
methods.  I worked for over an hour just trying to get the string to seat 
on the bridge.  Tried every tool in my arsenal.  At one point I said, "oh 
the heck with it!!" (somewhat stronger language, but this was, after all, 
in a church!) and figured I'd just go ahead and remove the action.  But 
Everett was a lot smarter than me, and I couldn't find any way to even 
remove the action without dismantling two-thirds of the whole 
instrument.  Talk about over-engineering!!  So I was back to square one.

I struggled for another hour or so and then finally admitted defeat.  It's 
an awful feeling.  I knew that few people listening to the instrument would 
be able to tell the difference, but I also knew that I couldn't just leave 
the string missing --- this is a church, and that piano must get pounded, 
and I'd be leaving a disaster waiting to happen.  I told the very nice lady 
in charge that I'd have to come back again when I have a better idea of how 
to tackle the problem (and also showed her the rust on the tuning pins and 
on the strings, just so she'd understand that this was likely to be an 
ongoing problem for the rest of this instrument's life).

Worst mistake of the day?  After calling quits on the string repair and 
notifying the client, I ran some scales in octaves and tenths just to check 
my tuning from last time.  It was gratifyingly solid, but I decided to 
touch up a few notes in the upper treble.  Stupid perfectionism.  On a 
slight, slight tweak to E6, --- sproinnnggg!!  Another string popped.

I was done for the day.  I couldn't take it anymore.

I'm certainly not the experienced old hand that typifies this list, but I'm 
not exactly an amateur either.  I've replaced strings in uprights and 
grands, and just last week I did a knot in the bass of a Kimball console 
that worked fine.  But today I feel like I'm starting all over again.

Please -- can somebody give me some tips?  How do you seat the string on 
the bridge when the bridge is buried behind the keyboard, as well as behind 
an action that is nearly impossible to remove?  I really want to make this 
piano right -- or at least as right as possible under the circumstances.

Mark Kessler



_____________________

"The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments... Some people crave 
baseball . . . I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a 
person could get excited about playing the bassoon."
Frank Zappa  
---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/b0/d4/ce/f4/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--