Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Join the false-beat revolution: get your wires straight!!!

Yes certainly , and for massaging the wire must be tense and at pitch.

Honestly I was doing when mounting new strings but without making a relation with tone quality, less false beats, etc.

Just confirmed that lately on individual strings.

It is easy to test by yourself.

The tone do not loose partials as when tapping on bridges for instance.

The same with the pin's tapping, I like it. and it make tapping in front or on the bridge not very efficient in the long run.

'Too late. I fear two participants are off dancing in the either of diminishing returns and ethereal minutiae.

Thanks A443. I always wondered whether the orientation of the bend matters. I still do, but I least I know that others think about it.

I played around with this some today...it makes a lot sense, in terms of a way to get the string level agreeing right off the mark, and the elimination of twist.

So I made a couple of trial coils and hitch bends. I have attempted for some time to get the natural position of the coil on the pin to to drop in without twist, but I must say, that its often hard to read just where the wire thinks its natural curve wants to be. Like today, of the 2 coils per wire, bent at the hitch as you show 443, I still often get one coil sitting just right, and the other canted maybe 15-20 deg. It seems like it has some way to go before it hits Arledge's 45deg false beat generation, but it will take some attention and messing about to be really consistent on the coil angle.

Its a good idea, I think, and will definitely string this way on a belly coming up for stringing in August.

Jim Ialeggio

Interesting... I do similarly, lowering before pushing or pulling upward.

Is not it mostly if you lower their tension? (plus age, indeed).
Any idea on the stress on bronze and steel wire here?

Greetings,
I think you are going to a lot of trouble for nothing, It is a simple matter to wind the first coil in the direction of the curvature, and then, after placing the wire in the bridge pins, go around the hitch pin while reversing the curvature. It is a simple technique that shouldn't take more than two or three attempts to master. You have to change the curvature as you bend the wire around the pin. This makes the returning string lie in the same orientation as the first, and all of the twist in the wire takes place behind the bridge at the hitch pin.
I have intentionally installed wire with 180 and 360 degree twists in them and found no false beats, so I don't think a twist is any sure recipe for a false beat. Far more often, it is the loose bridge pin, or the overstretched wire commonly found in new high-end American pianos.
regards,

Ed Foote,

Have you installed wire twisted at Arledge's 45deg, which is what I see as the issue to be avoided? This is the twist that I find most likely to happen if a clear protocol is not established to avoid it.

Jim Ialeggio

+1

When I think of "smiling unsion" I wonder iof it could not be advantageous to be attentive of the curvature by making the 2 outer strings going the same direction, and the center one the opposite.

After leveling , massaging etc, this will not be as marked, but I think the wire may keep the tendency to stabilize in that phasing shape (center string waving opposed of the 2 external ones)

Makes me think that if any perceptible effect it must be more due to the 3 strings than to one only (unless you mute the other, when you pluck one string the tone depends also of the 2 other)

45° is where the wire have the less clean clamping on the bridge, "rubbing" on the wood and the pin in opposed directions , so I understand this can be detrimental. it may "twist" the wave orientation sooner than when vertical or horizontal, with a similar effect as an insecure bridge pin (?)

A light hop at the base of the pin is enough to create a false beat, wood contact must be limited to the max I suppose.

High motion camera, very necessary here, to see if the wire is allowed to move behind the bend in some cases.

I had briefly considered a similar concept. I thought: it could be advantageous if one could control a slightly sharpening tone in the decay. There are some psychoacoustical benefits to that kind of approach--especially if it were to go along with a specific style of unison tuning (e.g., ++0, +00, etc.). It might be possible to control this with specific curvature orientations.

I haven't travelled down that road of experimentation yet, because getting all the strings in the same plane--to eliminate the need for aggressive levelling--has become paramount in my consideration to eliminate falseness/false-beats in the tone (i.e., levelling can/will introduce falseness with the typical american approach to the madness ).

However, with the individually tied-off single strings (e.g., many european pianos), a slightly different string orientation for the left string would be an approach that might be worthwhile to at least look into for more control over the tonal shape and projection.

Since my objectives have been to install straight wires on both sides, I haven't really yet observed how a 5 degree change in curvature orientation or a 5 degree coil orientation effects the tone (i.e., if I bent a wire inconsistently, I simply made another one). I've spent the entirety of my focus on choosing a straight orientation. In the beginning, it is not easy to read the wire to see exactly how and where to make the bends, but with enough practice, the skill can be mastered to produce consistent visual/tonal results.

Wow that is a brainstorming session there.

Not only Americans can be somehow brutal on wire.

As I learned, for vertical pianos, you take an old transmission lever (behind the pedals) of an old vertical piano (wooden lever type)- you fix on its end a small bar to make a T shape.

Then you stand in front of the piano, push on the T with your stomach (and weight, the beer drinkers have some advantage on that part) , then massage up and down the wire unison by unison until the wire is heated enough (which is fast)

The wire is not supposed to be deformed here, or it will degrade, but in mediums the stress factor is very low usually so the stretch can be large.

bass strings are then mounted, if not all the lower tenor wires have to be massaged before mounting the basses (which I do generally).

It is too soon to ascertain the tonal change at that point, that is why that aspect escaped me . But if you have a few replaced strings on some pianos, the experience is easy to do, with a hammer shank for instance.

That "heat process "is officially a stabilization method.

Regards


BTW to do lightly or avoid with Paulello wire, anyway look at the stress factor level before going on..

I've been reading and following this thread, and I have given a little bit of thought to what I think is trying to be accomplished, which is to have a coil on the tuning pin in the pinblock in the piano, without any twist to the wire. So it got me thinking about stringing a bit. That is something I have done for the past forty years, the way most everybody does it, by hand using a tuning pin crank to make the coil and then driving the tuning pin into the pinblock through the plate.

I got thinking about alternative methods of stringing. Long story short, I looked up the Sciortino insta coiler, and watched a video on how it is used. Here's the thing: The tuning pins are all driven into the pinblock beforehand to a set height. The becket hole is straight out towards the bridge (or 90 degrees to the stretcher). Then the end of the wire is then fed through the becket, the tool is placed over the tuning pin, and then 2 1/2 coils are wound around the tuning pin while in place. Then the wire is fed around the hitch pin, back under the capo or agraffe, cut to length and then fed through the becket and turned as before.

It seems to me that, unless the stringer were applying some restraining force, any twist in the wire would be relieved before the wire goes into the becket. Further, I cannot think of any forces further applied in the remaining act of stringing that would introduce any twist in the wire (that would not be relieved)

I have never used the insta coiler, so I can't speak from the experience of usage. I would be interested in the comments of others.

Will Truitt

I am interested to hear what people have experienced with that tool.

I like the idea to have all the pins inserted and +- leveled, then I like to make tight coils from the start, with a T hammer or a crank (the T hammer is very convenient)

I could do the same with the usual sawed pin to make the coil outside the piano (installed with round nose pliers then)

I do not figure if it is faster with that method or no. Less tools handling is usually a good thing indeed.

Hi Jim,
Yes. I decided to destructively test some of my suspicions and theories on a piano that was coming down anyway. I talked to James about his and Jim Ellis's findings, and found that they were pretty well on the mark. I twisted a couple of single strings a full 360 degrees, and upon pulling back up to pitch, sounded just as fine. I put some in that were curved up and some down, some sideways, etc. I tried getting the curvature to mimic what they did with their string lathe, but I found it difficult to actually install the curvature at 45 degrees. The natural way to coil is with the curve, and then the pin is at 90 degrees. I had to intentionally begin the becket with the pin at what was, to me, an unnatural angle to the wire.

What I do to avoid this when stringing is to wind the coil so the curvature is dead on 90 degrees to the pin. Thus, when the pin is then put into the block, the curve of the wire is to the left,(bass, as this is for grands). This curve is then taken to the bridge pins and laid amongst them while maintaining the curve horizontally. This causes the approach to the hitch pin to have the curvature going away from the direction I want it to, i.e. clockwise around the pin. So, I use the distortion that is going to happen as the wire bends around the hitch pin to also allow me to twist the wire 180 degrees as I bend it "backwards" around the hitch. I pull firmly and as the wire is pulled through the bridge pins, they tend to anchor the orientation as I bring the curve backwards around the pin, the long end of the wire is rotated forward as the wire forms its bend. It seems that as the wire is bending 180 degrees, it's temporary plasticity allows an easy reversal of the curvature.
Done properly, I will see two curvatures nesting with one another before I cut the wire and feed it through the agraffe. Then, I make sure that the curvature is 90 degrees to the pin and wind it on. When that pin goes into the block, it will be holding the curvature horizontally, which is where i leave my strings when I install them.

I get a lot less false beating than new factory work...
Regards,

Less about age and more about lower tension. I used to have a chart with stresses of the wire. Iron wire was also used in the treble of many harpsichords.

Ed,


Thanks for your description. Unless I'm understanding your description wrong, which of course is entirely possible ( pictures are really helpful in something this simple ), it sounds as if the end goal of what 443 and you are proposing achieves the same goal by different means. The goal being the natural curvature of the 2 sides of the wire nesting, ie curving in the same direction, and the coil sitting 90 deg to the natural curvature so the inserted pin is not inducing any extra twist.

Have I read your description correctly???

Jim I

My main objective--with the way that I install strings--is to achieve greater consistency in the string levelling, without having to touch/adjust anything in the speaking length of the string (i.e., because I know THAT process creates falseness/false-beats in the tone). I also happens to be the case, that zero twists in the system also eliminates much of the falseness.

Ed Foote, when you where testing the different twists/turns, did you observe the lack of a "false-beat" or did you observe with an ETD the change in tonal stability over time(i.e., speeding-up/slowing-down and drifting higher/lower throughout the sound envelope)? The later, is a matter of falseness, and is the attention to detail that I am actually talking about, monitoring with an ETD, and observing.

My methodology NEVER produces actual false-beats, as is heard from the NY factory. Why? It is because I am not levelling the strings (i.e., deforming them) and I never "seat" the string at the bridge. <----deformations are where most false-beats come from (i.e., it is NOT loose bridge pins; if it were, vice grips would temporarily eliminate/diagnose the problem). Wire twists, in my experience, is where falseness over time is created. There are other issues that can cause false-beats, but those problems need to be addressed where those problems lie.

I think it is somewhat similar in terms of twist, except the planes/paths that the wires travel in are different)

Ed, are your coils both done in the direction of the natural curvature, or is the second coil against the natural curvature (i.e., you start with the left string, coil with the curvature, backwards [against the natural curvature] around the hitch pin, and now the natural curvature for the right string is in the direction of a C [what do you do here: 1)follow the natural curvature with the coli and flip 180 degrees, or 2) make the coil against the natural curvature of the wire]?

Yes, Jim, that is the procedure. It was taught by Bill Garlick and ( I think), Ernie Juhn in a class on restringing at North Bennett in 1975. The emphasis was on having our pianos look like the 60 year old Ivers and Pond when it was finally restrung. We had cut the wires on a big Ivers and Pond upright and all of them curved the same way. Just another layer of consistency.

Both coils have the curvature in the same direction. I bend the wire around the hitch while giving it slightly more than 1/2 twist. It comes out with the curvature laying in the same plane and direction as the first wire. I tried to intentionally make the two legs of the wire have opposite curvatures. It is difficult to have the wire stay in the same plane when being bent back against its natural curvature. Careless rounding of the hitch pin will leave that curvature in all sorts of orientations. Intentionally twisting it as it is bent can bring create consistent, properly oriented, curvatures.

Inre A443's criticism of bending wires at their terminations: after some years of treating recording and performance instruments with this, I have not found this to create falseness, at all. It is often the case that a slight, sideways push of the wire into the bridge pin can change things for the better. I live with my work at the school, and most of our concert instruments have less than vertical agraffe drilling. I have always used the strings' leveling before carving the hammers into an irregular mess, and have not found any of the downsides mentioned.

Agraffe buzzes will usually go away with a sharp strike, straight down into the topstring, directly behind the capo. I actually broke a string doing this, once, many years ago. This has little to do with bending wire in the speaking length. The small deviations of agraffe holes are more easily addressed with the slight lifting of wire than any other way, and I have yet to see the procedure do anything but improve the unison. It also address the problem of una cord requirements. If you have a low string in the middle of the tri-chord, what are you gonna do?
Regards,