Subject piano: S&S "B" -- and quite a nice one at that. Has somebody's signature on the plate. SN 533886. Last tuned 3 months prior. "Newer" customer acquired summer 2020.
Situation: Customer complained of "buzzing". I determined that a likely cause was the fact that the strings were not level -- probably hadn't been touched since the factory.
Action taken: So, I leveled the strings throughout the entire piano. The high treble section wasn't bad but I decided to carry on up through that area just to be thorough and as long as I was in that mode. I also used the tool now available from Piano88 to clarify the bend of the wire around the forward bridge pin.
Result: In all except high treble there was a notable improvement in what I call "solid piano tone" and the "buzzing" was gone. However...
Problem: The tuning in the high treble was unstable. Not just the normal pitch being off which is why string leveling is done
before tuning rather than after. No... this was wild, kittywompus, out-of-this-world unstable. I went through the high treble about five times and it was still moving when I left. I arranged to return a few days later (yesterday) and refined the tuning through the rest of the piano and did probably another 10 passes through the high treble section (maybe 20 -- I wasn't counting). By then, both I and my customer had to move on to other things but the treble was still unstable although the unisons were more-or-less where they were supposed to be. But still, strings were creeping either sharp or flat for no obvious cause.
Comment: I've only been tuning for 55 years so I'm still learning but I don't think the issue is with tuning technique. I've never had this result from doing string leveling or refining the bend at the forward bridge pin. The only similar experience I've had is in the high treble section of a Baldwin SD-10 where several adjacent notes on either side of a broken string will go wildly out of tune and will require multiple passes to tame after a new string is installed (or a splice is done).
Any suggestions -- either by way of analysis or, more worthwhile, a solution?
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Keith Akins
Akins Pianocraft
Menominee MI
715-775-0022
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