String noises revisited

Allen Wright akwright at btopenworld.com
Fri Jul 11 17:02:43 MDT 2008


this line of thought is very interesting to me, as agraffes was what  
I first wondered about with this noise, but didn't do anything  
about.  I considered changing one to see if it would make any  
difference. I guess it wouldn't hurt to do that...this only makes  
sense if the theory is that there's something operating with agraffe  
problems in the tenor region (plain wires) that's not happening  
elsewhere? It seems a bit odd to me that so many B's would have an  
agraffe-related problem in the same few notes.

I just returned from a short trip away, doing some damper  
troubleshooting in a very nice 4 year old Hamburg B outside Glasgow.  
After finishing up the day with tuning and some voicing, the owner  
was quite happy with the improvement. But as he played up the scale  
he immediately noticed the same high ringing we're discussing here -  
on the D#3 - and pounced on it. I couldn't believe this same  
phenomena was haunting me again! I basically said, "sorry - this is  
something common to the B's and I'm afraid I can't help you with it  
(now, at least) except for a bit of voicing. Hopefully you won't  
notice it in actual musical contexts". Which is probably largely  
true; but still, I'd like to figure out what this is and be able to  
make it go away. People notice this sound; that one small section  
jumps out as having a different quality.

Allen


On Jul 10, 2008, at 8:14 PM, Kazuo Yoshizaki wrote:

> I recently had this problem with an Essex grand although I don't know
> if this is the problem that Allen is facing now. It had a noticeable
> jing with forte. I loosened the strings and 'dressed' the inside of
> the agraffes by tweaking the strings with a string hook, and the noise
> was gone.
>
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:33 AM,  <BobDavis88 at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Allen, I'm still thinking about this, and, although I don't know  
>> if it
>> relates to the Hamburg pianos, there was a run of New York pianos  
>> in the
>> seventies that had a poor agraffe profile. That is to say, the  
>> shape of the
>> inside of the agraffe did not make a good termination. I have a  
>> couple of
>> D's that exhibit this in the tenor. We restrung one, changing the  
>> agraffes,
>> and it really cleared up the high metallic whistle. Inspecting the  
>> old and
>> new agraffes under magnification really showed up the difference.
>>
>> On the other D, increasing the draft angle slightly by putting a  
>> center pin
>> under the string (on the counterbearing felt) made a big improvement,
>> although we'll still eventually want to replace the agraffes.
>>
>> Let us know when you find out for sure what it is.
>>
>> Bob Davis
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
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Allen Wright
London, UK

http://www.broadjam.com/akwright




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