Seiler bleed through

[Ron Nossaman]

> Between the 2nd & 3rd service calls (scheduled every three months) the 
> bleed through returned--in the exact same spot.  I did everything I know 
> (except removing the strings and having a look at the v-bar), and in 
> spite of a fairly mellow voice (for these hammers) I still ended up 
> weaving cloth into the front duplex.  
>  
> Is this a case of a defective v-bar?  Does that happen?  If so, can 
> something be done about it?  

It's more likely a case of defective design. It's possible to get 
lucky with bar shaping and hammer voicing, but the bottom line is 
that the front duplex is too long and the counter bearing angle too 
shallow. It's doing what it was designed to do - make noise. 
Unfortunately, it just happens to actually be in tune and is loud. 
The easiest dodge is a drop of glue on the string in the duplex. 
This adds mass and de-tunes it so it can still make noise, but it 
won't be at the annoying coincident partial pitch it's at now, and 
won't be as noticeable. This is just the price of the tuned front 
duplex system. I haven't yet detected any benefit.


  > BTW, I asked if he had ever had a string breakage problem with 
any other
> instruments he had owned and the answer was no.   He reported to me that 
> when he talked to someone at Seiler about the string breakage, they said 
> it was because the tuner was not letting down the string tension 
> first before tuning.  Gosh, I only do that when I suspect a problem 
> piano--have I been tuning the wrong way all these years?

I do it pretty much automatically on every pin with every tuning. 
Doesn't take much, just enough of a bump to detect the pitch change 
or hear the ping. It's a belt and suspenders sort of approach of 
someone who's discovered countless other ways to screw up, and is 
trying to avoid some of the more obvious ones. So these strings are 
breaking during tuning, rather than during play?

Ron N