Krikorik, I will PM you details, since I don't want to detour the thread in a direction few readers would be interested in following. Several different programs were used because of some difficulties encountered along the way. Some experimenting with actual strings would be the next logical step since I am still sitting with a hypothesis.

I have heard that bass players will remove their strings and boil them. Then they replace them and it really livens up dead strings. I have no idea if this would work, but it may be worth a shot. Maybe you could try it with one or two strings first and, if they come back, you could do all the bass strings. Reinstalling the freshly boiled strings would save a considerable amount of money. Again, I'm not sure about this, but it seems that it would be worth at least a try. Of course make sure that they are very very well dried before reinstallation. Also, since I'm not a piano technician, I don't know the ramifications of trying to reinstall the same string. I'm just throwing this out there.

Bill:

Thanks for the reply. My bass strings still have plenty of life, but I wonder if there could be a scaling improvement. My DC is on the right side. I will try to avoid left hand installations.

Indeed, I played with some bass players who did so very successfully. A few years ago that topic came up on the PTG mailing list. I remember that an Australian collegue tested it with piano strings and it worked.

Gregor

I'll bet that when BDB sees this post, his eyes will roll to the back of his head!

There are lots of things that can do something to make old bass strings sound a little better for a short time. Usually that just means making them louder at the cost of quality of tone. If it does not last for more than a year, chances are it will be cheaper to replace the strings instead.

My duet partner is married to one of the world's great bass technicians. I could ask him about boiling bass strings. The sort of bass players I tune for can afford to replace their strings when they need to, though. The show I am tuning for tonight is a bassist.

Oh, I forgot to mention: some bass players use Kukident ( the USA pendant is called Fixodent I think), which is a pellet that produces sparkling when put into water. But that´s the luxury version. Boiling is just cheaper.

Gregor

I was called to a Church one time that had a Day Care. They told me some kid had spilt Kool-Aid on the piano and now half of the bass strings were dead. I used Arledge bass strings to replace the whole set. The question I have is there anything I could have done to restore the bad strings. It was mostly sugar and water that ruined them and not anything that had oil it it. I was once told boiling the strings in water could have cleaned them up but I've never tried that myself.

I have trouble buying that you could actually simulate a string in this or even something like a full cosmos model for failure. Lots of variables and no real relation any real measurement of "tone", which is what we are really talking about here.

I will buy that taking a sting and letting it sit in solvent might fix the problem. I know that a few bass players who boil their strings to clean them, then soak them in something highly volatile and let dry in moving air.

Short of just leaving them be is there a correct way to clean strings on a old piano, specifically say just around where the hammers hit so that you keep everything clean.

EDIT
here is the link to the bass strings
http://www.tunemybass.com/string/how_to_clean_bass_strings.html

100% wood spirts so no water no oil.

I have had very good results in bringing back some tone in old bass strings by lowering the pitch on each one about an octave and playing loudly a number of times and then bringing the pitch back up (plus another 20 cents or so temporarily while tuning the rest of the piano). The pitch will drop some, and the bass should be retuned a week later. This is a particularly good technique for old pianos that have a few notes that are much worse than the others.

(The octaves sound kind of neat. I have thought about tuning a piano this way on purpose, just to see... Hmmm, I have a likely suspect in mind, too. There is a Vose spinet that I will probably take off of someone's hands just because it has a dampchaser... I could tune the treble strings this way too if I take my time and choose the correct strings...)