Loose Tuning Pins
By Bruce Clark
As a retired tuner and player technician, I can say that any piano that I ever tuned which had been treated with a pin tightening agent, made the pianos very difficult to tune due to a certain amount of sponginess that the chemical created in the pin block. It was sort of like tuning a piano with pins set in bubble gum. It made the pins difficult to "set". The familiar "jump" in a tuning pin, that only piano tuners are aware of, is gone.
I have seen pianos that may have had the chemical applied in a sloppy way, causing corrosion and destruction on the coils wound around the tuning pin, and even corroded tuning pins.
This pin "dope" may have been an earlier version, but I saw so much damage from it, over the last 40 years, I never considered using it. Modern versions may be different, but if I had a valuable piano, I would not want any chemical used on it.
Bruce Clark
Tuner from 1946 to 1996 |
(Message sent Sun 2 Mar 1997, 13:36:31 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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