[pianotech] How come?

[David Love]

I prefer to leave the pin in a neutral setting with the smallest amount of
pitch manipulation as possible.  When I'm through, if I bounce the hammer
lightly back and forth on a the same plane as the pin turns, the pin
shouldn't move.  In fact when in doubt as to a pin being settled, I find
that smaller and smaller back and forth bumps until there is virtually no
movement at all will tell you if the pitch will remain stable.   I prefer to
pull the pin up to the target pitch and stop (not going beyond) with
pressure exerted on the pin to offset the torque so that  once the pitch
gets to where you want it the relaxing of forward and downward pressure on
the pin offsets the release of pin torque and the net effect is zero-the
pitch doesn't move.  No pulling past pitch and pounding it back down.
That's less stable as it just creates a poorly distributed string segment
equilibrium as a starting point.  If the pitch is sharp to begin with then
you have to decide to first lower the pitch and come from underneath or to
nudge the pitch downward.  If you nudge it downward then your final test
must be a slight tug toward the sharp side to see if the pitch won't go back
sharp and to make sure that the pin isn't left with pitch lowering torque
that will relax and pull the pitch sharp.  

 

David Love

www.davidlovepianos.com

 

From: Thomas Cole [mailto:tcole at cruzio.com] 
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 10:32 PM
To: David Love; Pianotech
Subject: Re: [pianotech] How come?

 

On 10/23/10 3:59 PM, David Love wrote: 

What do you mean by setting the pins "heavily or lightly"


This is like trying to put into English how to tie a shoe. But I might
hazard a theory about my hammer technique.

Heavily-set pin: the string is pulled above pitch liberally and worked back
down such that not only the twist is removed from the pin but some
additional twist is added to leave the pin almost wanting to pull the string
back sharp. This twist opposes heavy playing wanting to pull slack out of
the tuning pin segment. If the note rises after some time, then I would say
that the pin was "over set."

Lightly-set pin: The string is pulled above pitch more conservatively and
after settling, the pin is left in a more or less relaxed state, as if to
anticipate only the stresses of diurnal temp/humidity changes. 

To use another's terminology which never did quite catch on: it depends on
where you leave the tuning pin in the "marshmallow zone."

Tom Cole

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