Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Would it be feasible to splice this?

My Kimball Grand has what I can make out to be (officially 3, they loop around of course) broken Treble Strings and my usual technician is on leave and at the moment I cannot find any good technicians around me (I am still looking)

I was just wondering, would it be feasible at all to splice these wires?



Please let me know,I'm interested in this as a temporary solution and I'd say I can be pretty handy with this as I have worked with wire like this before... thanks again!

Based on how and where they broke the answer is NO. They need replacement, and you can doubtlessly expect more to go as well. Sorry.

Pwg

There will be blood.

I am all in favor of splicing where it is a better solution than replacement but this case is not one of those. As Peter said, if you have that much now, there is likely to be more. It may actually be a better choice to restring that part of the piano. If that is done, the technician may want to check the scaling because if it was strung with a too high breaking point, that may be the reason why this has happened.

You should also have the hammers filed or replaced if they are too far worn. That would also contribute to this kind of failure.

Keep in mind that if the scale had too high of a breaking point that rescaling -- in the sense of changing wire sizes-- will not help. No matter what diameter of wire is used, breaking percent remains unchanged. For example, thicker wire will be stronger but is more massive therefore requiring higher tension with a net result of having the same breaking percent.
If that is indeed the situation, then it becomes necessary to either move the bridge or the plate to change speaking length of the string. I currently have a Kawai GS-50 in my shop where I did just that. The GS (and KG as well) series is notorious for having long scale (note 88 was 57mm!!) which resulted in 80% plus breaking percent in the top treble section. I moved the plate towards the back 2.5mm so note 88 is now 54.5mm with a break percent of 70%. (I was trying for a 3mm movement but micro-adjusting plate location is a challenge. I'm happy to be within .5 mm of my target.) Of course, I expect tonal improvement as well because the high tension long scales tend to scream.

The comment about hammer shaping is right on. Poorly shaped hammers can promote string breakage as well as sounding bad.

If several notes with the same size wire break, it could have been a bad batch of wire. I have had that happen. If they break somewhere other than at the capo bar, I would say that is especially likely. If they break at the capo bar, it is probably from playing, but not necessarily.

With a Kimball, there are two ways of dealing with it that make sense economically: Replace the strings, or replace the piano. Unless there is something simple to do, it just does not make a lot of sense to pour money into this piano.

Although there is no way to determine for sure, it is possible that this area of the scale was massively over-pulled by someone, either at the factory, or later during a pitch raise. If so, and the wire was stretched beyond its elastic limit, but not enough to break it right then, it is simply a matter of time before the inevitable breakage.

Agreed that hammers can do this, as well as a very heavy and repetitive hand in that section. Wire fatigue is the culprit, no matter how it came about. I would replace what is broken, but as soon as the next one breaks, recommend complete section restringing...or just do it as was mentioned before.

Since in my experience Kimballs don't have a habit of doing this sort of thing, it argues that something has happened to THIS piano to bring it about.

Have fun! I love stringing pianos.

Hello Mr. Grey, I was not the one that broke the strings in the first place haha, I play fairly loudly but not THIS loudly and definitely not loudly up there!

This was an issue with the Piano when I got it months prior, things just got in the way for my schedule and my tuner's schedule so the only thing really that could be done was tune it up (Even I had to tune it up a few times)

My assumption with this poor instrument is that someone tried to tune it quite badly and wrecked it, it's literally the whole G unison up in that range that does not work and it's affected the F# and the Ab next to it. The reason I come up with this is because down below on the B2 when I first got it, one of the strings was badly out of tune (Ringing at a Bb), I first assumed that particular pin may have been loose but I tuned it up and it's been tuned up a bit since with no other work done to it and has maintained a perfect unison. Just goes to show what happens when people who have zero idea what they're doing get their hands on a cheap tuning kit.

---

As for everyone else, thank you for your guidance, I will definitely be replacing the strings up here but I will be leaving that to the RPT when he returns, I do not feel comfortable removing the pins to do so and unless anyone has a suggestion on how to do this WITHOUT removing the pin, I'll leave this to them

Thanks again!!!

Replacing strings should not be done by replacing the tuning pins unless you are replacing all the strings. You unscrew them about a turn, put the string in place, cut it to length, and then wind a coil on a spare pin. Remove the coil from that pin, put it on the tuning pin in the piano, and then pull the string to pitch. Very quick and easy, if you are experienced!

What BDB described is called the "dummy pin" method and is by far the preferred method. But more tools and knowledge are required than what you probably have, so as you said...leave it to the RPT. Smart move.

Pwg

Max done it's so. Old breaked strings he reinstalated as it was possible upright piano "PETROF"

Ah I see, something I did not know! - I'm truly interested in becoming more knowledgeable in the Piano Technician field so I certainly am hoping to keep educating myself. As for re-stringing this section, I'm just going to fix the broken ones for now (Officially only 4 full strings after removing all the broken ones)

If more break after that I'll just have to re-string the WHOLE HIGH TREBLE area thing. While it does seem a bit difficult, I'd love to be able to string the wires myself so I can learn but at this point I feel like due to the amount of strings it is, it'd be better to leave it to a pro...

That's great! There are some very helpful books you could get. Best of all, most comprehensive and up-to-date by far, is Mario Igrec's Pianos Inside Out
It's expensive though. At beginning level, you might find it very useful to have The Haynes Piano Manual which is the only piano technical book in full colour throughout. It's very reasonably priced. The standard text, until Pianos Inside Out, was Arthur Reblitz's Pianos - Tuning Servicing and Rebuilding. It's still excellent, with very clear explanations.

If you are wanting to tackle string repair yourself, why not buy some music wire of the correct thickness (use a micrometer to measure). You can probably get short lengths on Ebay. Or, use existing wire in the piano and make do with bichords instead of trichords, on the broken trichords, until your technician comes.

Thanks Keith,

Now, I seem to remember you writing about this before. Naturally, if you put on a larger size wire, it will break because it cannot take the required tension. However, I fail to understand how a smaller gauge wire would have the same tensile strength.

I know, for example that Kimball had some "happy" wrapped string specifications for its small verticals that experienced too many of them breaking. Yamaha also had a problem with a certain vintage P-22 for which nearly every one of them, strings #13 & #14 would break. In the latter case, I believe they shortened the wrapping.

Wrapped strings and plain wire would of course, have different factors but could you please explain how, for example, if a particular note of the scale had size 14 wire but would consistently break, if the same wire were replaced with 13 1/2 or even 13, how the tensile strength would remain the same? It seems counterintuative.

The smaller gauge wire does not have the same tensile strength, but it requires less tension. The change in tensile strength and the change in tension follow each other, so the strings are at the same percentage of breaking strength.

For mis-scaled trebles, one other alternative is worth examining. I have only recently learned about Paulello XM music wire, a grade of wire that has higher tensile strength than standard music wire:

http://www.stephenpaulello.com/en/les-5-types-daciers

I can't tell for sure from the pictures where the strings are breaking, but it looks like it may be where they cross over the red underfelt near the hitch pins. If all the strings are rusty at that point, the underfelt would be the cause.
If the underfelt was not properly washed during manufacturing, it can cause the strings to rust and eventually break.
I've seen this on a number of pianos.
A close up picture would help.

Lbonini1,

How old is this piano? Do you have a serial number?

The only way to determine if breakage is due to faulty scale drafting is to measure the speaking lengths of the strings, record the current gauge numbers (micrometer measurement is better) and calculate the tensions currently in existence. Average tension would be in the 150 - 160 lb per string. Someone might need to help you with that if you're going to analyze it.

If you are mechanically inclined, stringing is not beyond the imagination for you. BUT, you need tools, supplies, and patience.

Pwg

Thank you, BDB.

I've got the tools, just need the strings....
...and the patience, Lol

I may be inclined to do so now that I've found surplus rolls of wire on eBay, I was very hesitant to even try to take on the task since I could not find anything but those big huge rolls of wire that I wouldn't know where to put or what to do with after but now that I've found them, I may take this on as it might be a good learning experience for me.

I've researched the dummy method as described above and it is definitely a way better way to do this than removing the pins from the Piano and with a coil-maker (Which i can either DIY or buy a premade one) it shouldn't be a problem to get these done... still before I purchase anything I need to keep researching and reading up on this subject.

That said, does anyone have a tried and true method of measuring how much of the wire is needed for the job? I'm assuming one 10 foot roll may be enough but I'm not sure.