Had quite a successful and fulfilling day today work-wise. Started out by doing a bass string splice on a 1978 Kimball console (buying a new string would have been twice the price). And it turned out sounding nice without any buzzing, even though the splice is in the speaking length of the string.
Check it out:
Then I went to Dr. Irene-Peery Fox’s house to tune her Steinway D (the newer one) and fix a string on her Steinway B. I consulted with Russell Sorensen and ended up splicing that string as well, even though it was a treble string. It ended up turning out really nice.
My knot is on the left, and one that Russell did a few months ago is on the right:
This shows the tuning pins, paying particular attention to get them back to the original height. Turn both pins out 1 full turn, take out the becket of the longer string, turn that pin back in one 1/2 turn, put becket back in:
Basically you’re taking string length from the longer string and pulling it around the hitch pin so that your splice ends up in the non-speaking length if the v-bar. Straighten the section of string out that was around the hitch pin, splice the strings together (on the far side of the piano):
Slip the coil back under the v-bar, attach to the tuning pin and carefully pull up to pitch making sure the splice is on the non-speaking side if the v-bar.
Anyway, the tutorial might be incomplete but the end result was nearly perfect (except it forgot to lift the string to mate it to the hammer on the speaking length of the string (next time I go ill do that :)). Thanks for the help Russell!
p.s. The alternate way to fix a broken string simply by replacing it:
