The "pitch", as it were, was that treatment of music wire by extreme low
temperature made pianos that never needed tuning. This goes to the
mistaken belief that pianos go out of tune because strings stretch over
time, and ignores all reaction of wood to humidity changes. That alone
ought to make it obvious nonsense. Falcone did some testing of freezing
strings, but I don't recall that they ever released any results or
conclusions. Does anyone know of any reports?
I think it's just yet another mythological magic bullet that makes
everything in a piano perfect by the simple addition of one single item
or process. Kimball processed (cooked) pianos in their Mezzo Thermonial
Stabilizer (for unsurpassed tonal stability), and we all know how
astonishingly stable Kimballs were as a result. Iron pinblocks for
eternally tight tuning pins were another attempt. As simple as dipping a
set of strings in liquid nitrogen is, it would be a very easy way to
make all pianos wonderful in one cheap and simple step. If it worked, it
would be in all the brochures by now as a marketing point.
Ron N
Original Message------
I no longer have access to the reports -- if they even still exist -- but we ran some samples of bass strings in the late 1980s. I don't remember all of the details of the tests now but there was no discernable difference that could be heard or measured (using Baldwin's FFT analyzer) between these and standard bass strings.
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Delwin Fandrich
Olympia WA
360-515-0119
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-22-2014 16:47
From: Keith Akins
Subject: Piano wire analysis
And, while we're at it, let's see if we can get the guy to study samples of frozen wire.
There was an article a long time ago in the Journal and I have used frozen wire on occasion. The cryogenic people have metallurgical analysis of frozen wire, and anecdotal evidence of improvements in performance of some musical instruments, and audio equipment as well as drill bits and such but it would be interesting to have more detailed info about the use of frozen piano wire.