On Mon, 26 Jan 2015 05:32:38 -0800 (PST), TimR
wrote:

Just for info:

Pianos are tuned by twisting a steel pin that sits in a wood board.

Old pianos sometimes have the holes enlarged, or have small splits in the wood, and won't hold a tune, the pins will untwist under the tension of the string.

One cure is to remove the pins, redrill the holes, and install bigger pins.

Because of all the snipping and because I don't read Subject lines, only
now I see -- a little too late -- that pianos are not the topic of the
thread, but since I wrote this all, I'll post it for those of you with
pianos.

I'm 99% sure you don't always need to redrill the hole. I'm 99% sure
that in college, I replaced one pin with a larger one without any
drilling. Indeed the piano repairman at the Kimball Piano Company** who
gave me the peg didn't say anything about redrilling. I guess the new
pin was just a little bit bigger than the old. (I know I had no drill
and I didn't drill anything. The only other possibility is that I just
tapped the old pin in harder.) Whatever I did, it worked at least
until I left Chicago 5 years later.

**The repair department was on the 4th or 5th floor of their store on
State Street in downtown Chicago. Then I just called up to find out
where it was, took the eleveater up and asked a couple questions, and
the first guy sort of put me on a tour, to one guy who sent me to the
next guy to a total of about four guys, each of whom showed me what he
did and gave me parts to use.

Then maybe back to the first guy who gave me the address of the
wholesale piano parts store in Chcaog and his name to use so I could get
50% off the wholesale price.

I'm no poor college student anymore but this stuff might be easily
available on the web now, to anyone (at almost retail price, but still
cheap.

To put in a new peg YOU MUST SUPPORT THE SOUND BOARD ON THE PIANO BOARD
4 INCHES BENEATH IT (assuming it's a grand so the other board is
*beneath* it. Beside it for an upright.) Or the sound board will
crack and the piano will be worthless. Though the fraternity didn't
have much scrap wood, I was lucky enough tofind a block of wood 4x4" or
more just the right height that I had to push to get it in place. There
was no slack and no extra. And then I still tapped softly, getting
gradually a little harder until the pin went in.

You'll also probably need new wire for that string. Unless maybe you
wrapped the coil around the pin before putting the pin in. I know I
restrung one pair of keys but I'm not sure if it was t hat one or
another. (In a way it couldnt' have been that one, because if the
string were broken, as one was, I couldnt' have tried retightening it.)

To get the right wire you need to provide the key, B flat 2 octaves
above middle C, or something like that. And you need to provide THE
HARP SIZE. Pianos come in several sizes and the harp (I think it is
called) size is a letter from A? to E or F reverse-embossed** in the
harp, The same diameter string on a different size harp would give a
different pitch, so you need the harp size and the key. But some spare
too because piano wire is the strongest wire and it might come in handy.
Very hard to bend, however.

**What's the word for reverse-embossed, where the letter sticks out
*away* from the surface?

And you'll probably need a tuning wrench. The pegs are square but
they're in a crowd and hard to get any other wrench on them.

And someone wth a good enough ear to tune them. With multi-string keys,
first you dampen all but one string, and tune it, then you tune the
other strings to match that oner, listening until the beat frequency
disappears. I'm sure more about how to do that is online, but it's
worth mentioning that it's impossible to perfectly tune a piano. If
you make every third an accurate third and every fifth an accurate
fifth, you won't get an accurate octave!!! So tuning is a compromise.
I guess that is one reason they came out with the well tempered clavier,
in which the frequency ratio between every pair of consecutive keys is
the same, iiuc. But the piano is a millon times more popular.


I also needed a few ivories and black keys (ebony). IIRC the phone
receptionist at Kimballs told me to call Lyon and Healy, and for sure
the phone receptionist at Lyon and Healy told me to call their repair
location in some industrial n'hood of Chicago. But I didnt have to go
there. As soon as I started in on what I wanted he interrupted with
What's your address. And he mailed me a big back of used ivories (many
with cigarette burns but plenty without too.) and plenty of black keys.

I don't know where the rest of the bag is or the rest of the piano wire.
I might have left the bag behind on purpose but I know I had the piano
wire for several years and I never would have given it away, since
before the web, once I left chicago, I had no idea where to buy more.
Oh well.


But that's expensive and many pianos aren't worth it, or the board isn't in good enough shape.

Another cure is to tip the piano over so the board is flat, and drip a bit of crazy glue into the base of each pin.

It has to be very thin glue.