I said goodbye to a friend recently. While with Yamaha in the 90’s I purchased a Yamaha concert grand…a CFIII 51GX to be precise. GX designates an experimental model and 51 designates the series. The 51 was a design experiment that incorporated a number of design features of a popular concert grand made by a […]
Fixing my piano
Tuning part 2
A single piano key sets into motion a set of 3 strings, all set in motion by the same hammer and all tuned, ideally, to the exact same pitch. This collection of 3 strings is called a unison. One usually sets a temperment by muting off 2 of the 3 strings in each unison over […]
Fixing my piano – now the work begins
My Yamaha CFIIIS came back from PianoWorks in Atlanta and was installed in Charleston. It was very nicely strung with new pinblock and treble bridge cap. Flawless delivery to Charleston sounding very good on arrival. Good is relative, of course. The parts PianoWorks did were very very good. The sound of the hammers and their […]
Now I know how people got sucked in by Madoff
I should have known better, but I got screwed by a piano rebuilder in Yonkers. He came recommended by a friend who should know. Originally I just needed my piano restrung, a pretty straight ahead job if you’re a restringer so made sense to have it done. Long story short, the piano ended up in […]
“Why does it take so long…?”
Oh my dear, you understand me but you don’t understand the nature of piano technology. I took a good wack at making progress on my piano. I fine tuned the key level, then went over the hammer line, drop and let off before taking a critical bash at keydip. AT LAST, it’s beginning to feel […]
Stretching (not Yoga)
I’ve owned a Reyburn Cyber Tuner for the last year. Pretty cool little device and very informative to let you know what is going on when one tunes a piano. I’m far from being one of those egg head electronic tuners that are so common at the conventions, but have gotten a little way into […]