Hi Ted,
My take is that it is best to introduce a bit of twist in the wire. This is natural as part of the stringing process: make the coil with the tuning pin horizontal, then turn the pin vertical (putting a 90 degree twist in the wire.
This is not to say that one couldn't alternately do as you suggest: be aware of the curl and carefully make it either vertical or horizontal. Bradley Snook advocated for that, using a bending plier to make the hitch bend, doing it carefully with relationship to the curl of the wire.
But since a quarter twist seems to have no deleterious effect on tone, and since it seems to prevent the documented false beat issue, I just go with that.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm@comcast
"The cure for boredom is curiosity, and there is no cure for curiosity." Dorothy Parker
Original Message:
Sent: 2/4/2024 5:34:00 PM
From: Ted Kidwell
Subject: RE: False beat in lower plain wire.
I am trying to "twist" my mind around all this. I just finished studying the two articles from '08. As I read them, twist is neither a good or a bad thing, i.e, has little of no effect on false beats. However, it is important, in the longer and lower tension strings, to make the hitchpin loop parallel or perpendicular to the residual curl of the wire. So my takeaway is that it is best to cut the wire to length, then let the wire recurl before making the hitchpin bend. Is that the understanding of others?
The articles say that In the upper treble, false beats are more often the result of bad terminations- particularly bridgepins located in holes that have become flared at the top allowing the pin to vibrate excessively as well as strings that are not seated precisely to the bridgecap. This is exactly my experience.
By the way, I have had some good luck in reducing/eliminating upper treble false beats by scaling to keep tension high as possible (in the 170s and 180s). Inharmonicity goes up somewhat but I don't care about that so much. My theory is that the added tension helps with all of the above issues. Am I on the right track?
------------------------------
Ted Kidwell, RPT, CTE
KidwellPianoworks
4782 Pasadena Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95841
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 02-03-2024 17:28
From: Thomas Servinsky
Subject: False beat in lower plain wire.
This new thought on the origin of this type of false beat has my mind spinning. Can't wait to get over to the one B and see if I try this remedy. Fingers crossed that this solves this issue. Fascinating thread!!!!!
Tom Servinsky
Registered Piano Technician
Concert Artist Piano Technician
Director/Conductor- Academy Orchestra
Managing Conductor-Treasure Coast Youth Symphony
Keyboardist- Beatles Re-Imagined
Pianist with TLC Jazz Duo
tompiano@tomservinsky.com
772 221 1011 office
772 260 7110 cell
Original Message:
Sent: 2/3/2024 11:20:00 AM
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: RE: False beat in lower plain wire.
Yes, those low tenor unisons are the most difficult to nail, largely due to their low tension (less movement of the pin causes more movement of pitch), and any "junk" in the sound envelope makes the job that much harder.
Ed Sutton's suggestion of reading Ellis' article is a good one. You can access all the Journals online quite easily through the
Journal Archive, a project of the Education committee (the project having been led by Jason Cassel). That particular issue can be found
here.
My take on Ellis' experiment is that a bit of twist is a probably good thing when stringing. It is when an untwisted string is oriented so that the residual curl of the wire is at 45 degrees to horizontal (without twist) that false beats occur (and presumably lesser false beats would occur at orientations between 0 and 90 degrees).
At least that's how I read it at the time, and I come to the same conclusion in rereading it. IOW, if you are very careful not to introduce any twist while stringing, it is quite possible you are going to set the stage for false beats. Counterintuitive, but that's what seems to be shown by experiment.
Original Message:
Sent: 2/3/2024 9:03:00 AM
From: Thomas Servinsky
Subject: RE: False beat in lower plain wire.
So far, no one has raised an issue. But I end up spending a lot more time of massaging the unison to find an acceptable tolerance.
Tom Servinsky
Registered Piano Technician
Concert Artist Piano Technician
Director/Conductor- Academy Orchestra
Managing Conductor-Treasure Coast Youth Symphony
Keyboardist- Beatles Re-Imagined
Pianist with TLC Jazz Duo
tompiano@tomservinsky.com
772 221 1011 office
772 260 7110 cell
Original Message:
Sent: 2/3/2024 7:49:00 AM
From: Peter Grey
Subject: RE: False beat in lower plain wire.
My question is: "Are musicians complaining about this 'false beat' or is it just something that annoys the tuner/tech?"
Peter Grey Piano Doctor
------------------------------
Peter Grey
Stratham NH
(603) 686-2395
pianodoctor57@gmail.com
Original Message:
Sent: 02-02-2024 09:40
From: Ed Sutton
Subject: False beat in lower plain wire.
The article False Beats in Piano Strings – Part I by Jim Ellis,RPT, John Rhodes,RPT, James Arledge,RPT, and Darrell Fandrich,RPT in the August 2008 Journal describes false beats caused by the angle of the residual string coil arch relative to the plane of the hammer strike.
A residual coil arch at 0 or 90 degrees to the hammer strike does not produce false beats.
A residual coil arch at 45 degrees to the hammer strike produces clear false beats.
This effect is most pronounced in long, low tension strings such as the lowest plain wire notes of a Steinway B, duplicated on Ellis's monochord.
The first partial beat is generally so slow as to be inaudible, but higher partials can have pronounced false beats.
Twisting the string does not produce false beats if the combined front and rear twists produce a zero turn relative to the hammer strike, i.e +45 degrees on one end and -45 degrees on the other.
Thus, when stringing a piano it is desirable to orient the wire coil such that the hitch pin bend occurs in the plane of the residual coil, or errors exactly at 90 degrees to the residual coil.
Now, this is a suggestion by me (Ed Sutton): If, by loosening the wire you can see the arch of the residual coil, you might try putting in a counter twist (if possible) by resetting the coil on the tuning pin. With a lot of luck, this might duplicate Ellis's "front/back" twists well enough to reduce the false beats. Just a hypothesis.
------------------------------
Ed Sutton
ed440@me.com
(980) 254-7413
Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2024 18:06
From: Robert Callaghan
Subject: False beat in lower plain wire.
Hello.
I am experiencing something for the second time. Two different pianos. Piano 1 is a Steinway model D from 1998. Piano 2 is a Model B, purchased last year, so maybe it's 2022.
Piano 1 has a pronounced high pitched false beat in one plain wire string, F2. It is the left side string, lowest of the plain wire strings. Piano 2 is the same sound in F#2, but on the right side. The other two strings of the unisons are fine. I just can't get the "errant" string to blend with the other two.
I have seated the strings on the bridge, tapped the bridge pin, in case it was a little loose. I leveled the strings and mated the hammer to the strings. I also measured the strings with a digital micrometer to be sure they were the same gauge. They were the same, but that's what is sounds like, how when two unisons won't match when one of the strings is a different gauge. The fundamental is tuned, but the harmonics don't line up. Worse than that, there is an actual high pitched beat even on its own.
I'm down to thinking the strings are flawed in some way, perhaps got a kink in them when being strung, or perhaps a flaw in the agraffe. If it's the string all I can think of is changing the string. I don't look forward to having to pull the strings up every few days, though. And changing the agraffe seems pretty radical since I don't know for sure that is the source or the problem.
Aso, I wondered if the agraffe was square to the strings.
I didn't want to do anything as an experiment, so any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Robert
------------------------------
Robert Callaghan RPT
Reno NV
(775) 287-2140
------------------------------