I have a Steinway D in my client inventory that I've just finished a third tuning service+ on. It was some fourty cents low when I first encountered it. The client wants this piano to be kept in premium condition from now on for his performance venue. No note was more than three cents (A4) out when I measured it this time so it is settling down, somewhat. I decided to do a little maintenance on the piano/string voicing side. This involved tightening loops at the hitch-pins, straightening the path from the hitch-pin to the bridge pin (surprising how many clicked over into place), seating from front to back on the rear duplex, light seating at the back of the bridge, seating via use of a beat-suppressor on the front side (no tapping). The pitch dropped, as expected, from three to sixteen cents. I then did an over-pull pitch-correction. This is followed by seating the wire at the front duplex, then lifting in front of the capo and then on the back-side of the capo. After this I fine tuned the instrument. String noise was greatly reduced but still persisted in the mid treble on some strings. I tried holding something heavy against the front and back bridge pins and the beating/noise was reduced but not eliminated. I tried driving the bridge pins a little. There was some improvement. (BTW, why does Steinway have to grind those pins flat? It makes it hard to drive them without risking putting more torque off the driving axis stressing the hole.) So, I want to list all possible culprits for future investigation. Previous over aggressive string-seating. (some areas look like the string was crushed down into the bridge) Loose bridge pins Kink in wire at front bridge pin pulled into speaking length (should stretch out between tuning intervals?) Poorly shaped or too-soft & cut-up capo d'astro bar Scaling interference noise (choice of speaking length, node etc.) Sympathetic beats from undamped duplexes elsewhere in the piano Mis-shaped hammers Did I miss anything? How do you distinguish between the various sources? What are your favorite solutions? Does anyone have favorite methods to fix crushed bridge capping? I used CA on bridge pins that had cracks on either side of them on a DH Baldwin. I think it kind of worked to fill in some surfaces under the strings too. Did this about a year ago, still going fine, and going...? How about loose bridge pins? Is it preferable to go up a size? Or is it better to inject epoxy and re-insert? I've used ultra thin CA glue on an older DH Baldwin grand that had grain parallel to the bridge pin torque and there were cracks on either side. It worked fairly well. I'm monitoring for long term results. Kink in the wire? I stretched everything with a beat suppressor. I can't think of anything but time here. Capo problems? Excess paint and filler here can make noise. Filing that off helps. Poor shape, grooving, a dremel with a long stone bit works fairly well. More ideas, cautions? Scaling problems? Hammer shape/position might help. Pitch-Lock clamps may reduce the noise. Sympathetic beats in the duplexes? Long "bean-bags" such as Spurlock uses for damper work might help to eliminate this while tuning. I'm guessing the Steinway duplexes don't slide around to permit tuning. Poorly mated hammers? Check and re-shape. Joe's hammer shaping tool is cool! I used it on a Wurlitzer studio piano that needed help. It was fast reshaping the hammers and fast to mate them to the strings. Amazing what that did to the sound. Other ideas, observations, cautions etc. WELCOME ;-) Andrew Anderson
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