How to Splice Piano Wire (a.k.a. How to Tie the Piano Tuner's Knot)

in #music6 years ago (edited)

Replacing a piano string is not as simple as it first seems. New piano strings are very unstable and need time to stretch before they will hold a pitch for an extended period of time. Often times, a new string will require upwards of five or six tunings before it is acceptably stable.

Because of this, it is often a better idea to splice a broken string rather than replace it completely. This is especially true for wound bass strings which are both more expensive and have greater tonal variation than plain gauge strings.

Strings will almost always break near the tuning pin or the hitch pin. I have never seen a string break in the middle. This is helpful because it means that we can remove the short piece of the broken string and tie in a piece of new piano wire. This new length of wire will stretch just like a full new string would, but since the stretch will be limited to a short section it might only take one or two tunings to stabilize.

To splice a wire, we will use the piano tuner's knot. This knot is very simple, however it can be a bit difficult to actually tie due to the stiffness of piano wire.

To begin, make a clockwise loop in the lower wire. Be sure that the working end of the wire passes underneath the standing part of the wire.

Next, make a counter-clockwise loop in the upper wire. Again, be sure that the working end passes underneath the standing end.

In the lower wire, fold the loop 90 degrees downward, so that the tip of the wire is inside of the bend.

Hold the upper wire across the lower wire with the end pointing upwards.

Pull the upper wire across to interlock the upper wire loop with the standing part of the lower wire.

Rotate the upper wire so that tips of the two wires are pointing in opposite directions.

Bend the upper wire in order to feed the standing end through the loop of the lower wire.

That is the piano tuner's knot! When this knot it pulled tight during tuning, the two loops will lock against each other and hold tension.

When tying this knot in a piano, you want the knot to end up in a location where it wont be touching anything (i.e. the plate, tuning pins, other strings). Sometimes it might take a few tries to get the knot to be in an acceptable location.

Sort:  

Resteemed, your post will appear in the next curation with a SBD share for you!

If you are interested, there is a classical music community at the tag #classical-music and the discord below! Hope to see you there!


Your post has been supported and upvoted from the Classical Music community on Steemit as it appears to be of interest to our community.

If you enjoy our support of the #classical-music community, please consider a small upvote to help grow the support account!

You can find details about us below.

The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord.
Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio.
Follow our curation trail (classical-radio) at SteemAuto or help us out with a delegation!

Thanks @classical-radio!

I was unaware of the #classical-music community until now.

We are small, but slowing growing... although, this time of low crypto prices is taking its toll a little bit!

Congratulations @rjpeterson! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

Award for the number of upvotes

Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Do you like SteemitBoard's project? Then Vote for its witness and get one more award!

Your post was manually selected and voted for by @illuminati-inc (IINC) with support of @curie and @kevinwong. About IINC: here. About Curie: here. About Kevin: here.


This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.