down to the wire

[A440A at aol.com]

Greetings, 
    I suppose I have been looking around for some heresy, lately.  The 
temperament cauldron is simmering on a back burner, periodically boiling over in 
harmonic sizzles.  Some of us just have to tend to it, others ignore it, many are 
not even in the kitchen, but acknowledge the occasinal burst of steam and 
flavors, (along with the shouting and banging of pots and kettles).
    But that's not what I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to hear what others 
had to say about wire.  Old wire.  Wire that has been played near the extreme 
limits.  I have two examples:
  1.    I recently examined a 1917 Steinway M.  Totally alligatored case.  I 
mean it.  One of the most profound alligatoring I have ever seen, and very few 
dints, anywhere.   Not a single broken string in it.  It had been in a 
teacher's studio for decades and used for all day, most every day.  It had been 
regulated once in its lifetime,  hammers had 1 inch long flat spots and  almost no 
felt covering the underfelt or core.  It played like a truck, and the sound 
was like listening to rocks swimming in oatmeal.   Wear and verdegris were 
competing for attention anywhere you looked.   
            The owner is looking for maximum musical performance, so I 
suggested that she replace everything in the action, except for the keys, key frame, 
and action rails.  Go all the way from the pedals to the damper heads.  And 
don't touch the stringing. Even with the refinishing,  don't restring it.  She 
agreed.  This was after she had played approx. 18 Steinway grands I have 
rebuilt or regulated, (one advantage of being a CAUT).  
2.     I lease a 1914 model O to the Nashville Jazz Workshop.  It lives in 
mild victorian temperament,(oohh, a little hiss on the back burner...).  One 
Steinway artist said she had never had a bad night on that piano, and it is 
generally looked on with great favor. I have two actions for it, and pieced it 
together out of two pianos, with legs and lyre and stuff from one on the body of 
the other.  Well known jazz pianists have played this piano and like it.  I 
have seen some of the younger ones hit this piano, really hard.  It has the 
original wire in it.  
      
         While the idea of fully rebuilding both of these with new pinblocks 
and wire is appealing,(the boards are nice and alive, which I find in about 1 
out of 7 Steinways over 80 years old),  I don't know that it would be a 
musical improvement.  Both of these pianos sound really good and are almost free of 
false beats. Nice bridges and the pinblocks are also very tunable with 
original pins in them.  In short, they sound great with a new hammer under them, so I 
am wondering what it to be gained.  It can always be done later without 
undoing the work being done now.  
     What strikes me is that the plain wire on these pianos is superior to 
what is being used today.  That it is, for all purposes, unbreakable, and 
produces such a  consistantly nice musical tone, baffles me.  How could steel making 
not be better today than it was during World War I ?  
      I service quite a few modern pianos in heavy use.  They break strings 
and they have an enormously larger number of false beats.  While bridge 
notching and pinning and Capo bar condition are each a large factor in this, the wire 
itself creates the quality of the note.   I have had metallurgists tell me 
that the contamination of metals is a problem everywhere, as recycled metals get 
mixed, to a degree, and purity is expensive. And most of the steel in this 
country is made from recycling scrap.  But music wire??? 
     Anybody privy to the standards for metal used as music wire today? 
        
 Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See what's 
new at http://www.aol.com</HTML>