Plate Horn

[Greg Newell]

Avery,
         Put a piece of masking tape around it while your raising up the 
tension. That'll hold it long enough for the strings to do the job by 
themselves once tension is raised.

Greg Newell



At 07:05 AM 7/10/2005, you wrote:
>A question for you rebuilder types:
>
>I guess basically it's what is the procedure, when restringing, to ensure 
>the plate
>horn is snug? Here's what happened:
>
>My apprentice had restrung the plain wire section of a Yamaha G3. To save 
>a little
>time, I'd pulled up the middle strings for him with my SAT before he 
>arrived (whole
>step flat) and then he was in the process of pulling in the outside strings.
>
>I happened to be standing on the bass side and noticed a piece of 
>gold-painted metal
>lying on the keybed. A little quick looking and we discovered it was a 
>wedge between
>the horn and the belly (is that what that area's called?). Well, it 
>wouldn't go in
>but just a little, so I had him start lowering tension, starting at the 
>bottom of the
>tenor section. After several notes, the wedge fell out, so I knocked it up 
>again as
>far as it would go. Had to remove the sostenuto rod to give some "banging" 
>clearance.
>Then, same procedure done again and once more the wedge fell out. We 
>continued this
>until the wedge was almost all the way in. Finally, it went all the way up 
>to where
>it'd been originally. Plate screws had been tightened, BTW. I'm assuming 
>everything is
>OK now. No plate cracks, etc. :-)
>
>I've never had this happen before and am wondering why it did. Obviously, 
>the plate moved/flexed a little for this to have happened. I'd never seen 
>a wedge like this
>before, so didn't think to check it. I don't know exactly when it fell 
>out: while
>unstringing, pounding in the pins when restringing, while pulling up the 
>pitch?
>
>Any ideas on what I should have done to prevent this from happening? Any 
>other comments,
>other than how lucky I am to have discovered this before the piano was 
>fully strung and
>up to pitch? :-) Thanks.
>
>Avery Todd
>
>_______________________________________________
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Greg Newell
Greg's piano Forté
mailto:gnewell@ameritech.net