JD: Do you have any experience with Pure Sound wire? Comments? dp David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of John Delacour Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 11:18 AM To: Pianotech List Subject: Re: down to the wire At 11:13 -0400 23/10/07, A440A at aol.com wrote: >...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? This topic has come up several times on the list in my time, and at least twice I've given the results (from Dolge's book) of the tests on Poehlmann wire conducted at exhibitions from about 1867 to 1895 showing the terrific strength Poehlmann achieved. Not only was the wire stronger but it was far better polished and far less prone to rust than any modern wire I have come across. The colour was also different. I don't know what effect the addition of recycled steel to the mix makes -- I can't see that it would do any harm if the steel added was of the correct quality to begin with, and I suppose that's the big question. I think there are probably still good special steels for specific engineering uses, and probably steels that were not available 100 years ago, but by and large my experience is that modern steel is rubbish. I have tools from the 18th and 19th centuries that almost refuse to rust, and if you force them to rust they can still be just gently rubbed over with steel wool to come up birght again. As to piano wire, who cares?! I have complained so many times to suppliers and direct to Messrs Roslau and seen little improvement over the years. A few years ago I talked to Webster and Horsfall, makers of the original patented wire, about producing wire to the old Poehlmann specs, and I'm thinking of approaching them again. There are wires made with a better polish than R. and some of them are usable, but they all go rusty, whereas Poehlmann wire in a good environment rusts with great difficulty and very superficially. As a bass string maker I know of noone among my competitors who is satisfied with the quality of the wire from the main maker. We all want something better, but it would take a lot of time and expense to achieve it, presuming that it is possible. JD
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC