I tackled a restringing job on a Yamaha G3 in our university collection, with no budget for a set of new bass strings. Wire surfaces were severely rusted, as seen in photo.
I had successfully cleaned a set of bass strings some years ago using household ammonia. You can see the procedure on Youtube by searching "piano bass string cleaning hampshire piano". That piano, however had no rust to worry about.
I soaked the bass strings overnight in Evaporust, which successfully removed the rust, but left a black residue on the surface of the steel wire. I followed up with the ammonia cleaning protocol, scrubbing the ends of the strings with Scotchbrite to remove as much of the black residue as I could. Predictably, on the loops, only some surfaces could be reached.
Results? The monochords that were double-wound with copper were an utter failure. Their tone, when installed, was dull and lifeless. Flexing them significantly after they were dry (rolling a loop up and down the length) offered scant improvement. Fortunately, on this piano, only A0 and A#0 were double wound. All of the strings that were single wound with copper, however, turned out very acceptably. I installed two new double-wound strings from J D Grandt yesterday afternoon, and the old and new strings sing along nicely together.
I would love to have installed a new set of rescaled bass strings in this instrument, but the existing strings are set to serve well for the foreseeable future.
This piano also saw an action rebuild, using parts that were already waiting for in in our inventory. It's awfully nice to have this piano back in a musically responsive state, after having been a "bottom of the barrel" grand in our collection for quite a few years.
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Floyd Gadd
Regina SK
306-502-9103
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