I may have the opportunity to tune a Hamburg Steinway, model D grand in the not so distant future.

It would be my first Steinway D to tune.

May I ask those of you who have experience in tunig the Steinway D grand for your input and advise on tuning them?

Thank you.

It should be easier than tuning small pianos. A beginning tuner should start with concert grands and work towards tuning spinets, but it does not happen that way!

Ok, thanks BDB.

I tune plenty small pianos.

Make sure the customer is happy so it becomes a regular piano for you

Most all D's are a joy to tune.
I tune them all the time.

Exactly. You can hear what you are doing. BDB is right. You won't have to be constantly figuring out comprises as with a small piano. See if you can allow yourself time to enjoy it. The treble will be slightly more familiar ground but it in the long steels and covered bass strings you will experience the most difference.

I hope you don't have a pitch raise or anything to detract from the pleasure.

Thanks to all.

Regards,

If you haven't had much experience tuning Steinways or other pianos that don't have tuning pin bushings, you will notice the pins behave differently. You tuning technique should automatically accommodate after a short while. The goal is a stable tuning, so turn the pins as minimally as possible and take care to set each pin as best you can. You should do fine.

Mark, you may wish to keep the lever in the wire direction or very near, so to better feel what is going on without flagpoling.
But I suppose you are aware of that.

For the rest, you may enjoy ! setting is easy, way more than with wood bushings, no need to overdo it, use a few test blow to verify that, but the sensations are different, lighter, than with much pianos.

Thanks Jurgen and Isaac.

Regards

Dear Mark,

The advice you've seen is all excellent. I would only add that the highest treble area can be difficult to hear, if you are not often tuning big pianos with their duplex scales and capo segments ringing in the mix. I'm talking about the short segments outside the speaking length, at the front and back, which will ring sympathetically when you strike the notes. You may want to mute these areas to quiet the 'extra' input, to let you concentrate on the sounds you need to hear.

Plan on tuning the instrument twice, if you have the time, and treat it as a 'pitch-raise', even if it is close to pitch. Once through to get the piano 'leveled-out', and then a fine persnickity tuning. This lets you develop a feel for the strings and pins, and insures that your 'fine-tuning' will need minimal changes as you go through the second time...and you'll have a better understanding of how the pins and strings react to your tuning input. Fair enough?

The D can be a bit twitchy in the top octave. On your second pass; after each unison tuning in the highest octave, check the previously tuned unison, and make sure it has not been disturbed by your tuning its neighbor. Again; tune it twice for the best result. I agree that you'll do fine! Large pianos sound wonderful to the ear, and you will enjoy it!

Hope that helps,
Sincerely,

Thank you very much Jeff!

I got confirmation today that the folks i submitted the quote through to for the tuning of the S&S D would like me to tune it next week for them.

Thank you,

you will be surprised by the POWER of the instrument.
Just refrain to bang extra hard until you feel correctly the tuning
pin and wire, it would make your ears tired too soon.

Amoderate mF play, and an extra short blow test for security allow to keep the work pleasant.

It is a huge advantage to have a good analysis of the harmonic content, RXD stated lately that he rarely listen to the fundamental, there is quiet a lot of a basic truth in that sentence. (plus focusing on a partial is so much less tiring,and allow to listen to the global tone at some point, taking one parameter then another, you are so much quiter than chasing for beats or for moaning)

plus if you begin to listen to it in the mediums, when you will be in the high treble you still can focus on thickening it..

Best wishes

This is all very interesting to a pianist. Like with the players, is tuning an S&S-D a rite of passage? Somehow growing up and becoming a member of an exclusive club?

When I was growing up and devoted to the piano, our family had an S&S-M. Arriving in Senior High, I discovered the school had a 'D.' Not only that, it was a 'C-D.' OMG! I was super excited and nervous the first time I played it.

Loosing one's virginity is a monumental event.

Congratulations Mark!

A Steinway D has significantly more string tension than other pianos you may have tuned.

You will feel it in the pins, especially in the bottom half of the piano.

If you are adjusting pitch/tension, plan on a little more time for that than usual.

Wound tri-chords can finicky to tune.

Most of all, I might ask yourself why they are using a new tuner. If it is a new piano to them, OK. If they have used others then they may be looking to either save money of get a better result.

Concert grands are under more scrutiny for result and from a larger group of people. This is always a recipe for paying more attention to your final result and the folks that are playing it.

When it is an in home client, most often you are talking directly to the piano player and they are paying the bill.

Concert grands, often you don;t talk directly to the pianist and the person hiring you is not necessarily the person actually paying the bill.

This group dynamic is different that the "home" piano situation.

my 2.34724 cents

Marty, however well meaning you may be, your profanity and likining the tuning of a S&S D for the first time to loosing ones virginity is vulgar and not acceptable.

Please refrain from such behaviour and language on my thread/s.

Thank you,

What are you talking about Mark? Marty was congratulating you. I see where he uses NO profanity at all. OMG is "Oh My Gosh!" I didn't see anything wrong with it at all. Maybe the language barrier is once again, the problem?

Must be a cultural or religious thing. Marty was congratulating.

Read it as it is written; a standalone sentence.

I saw this earlier and I am in agreement with Mark. This part, as a standalone sentence, is vulgar and unacceptable on a forum of professionals.

Using sexual innuendo for describing piano tuning technique or experiences is not the trademark of consummate professionals.

First of all, it was a metaphore. Look up the definition. It was not intended to be sexual.

Secondly, I feel sorry for individuals who equate the reference to something which is considered to be dirty, shameful, or somehow needs to be kept hidden.

Enjoy your cloistered, intellectual celebacy.

Anyhow, all the best to you Mr. Davis.

Jean

That is one interpretation. This is not the appropriate place for such statements.

Intellectual seems to be something that is absent in the response.

This is Mark’s thread and he will make the decisions as to what content he desires.

Perhaps pool all of your consideration into one place, as Mark has politely asked, if there is nothing beneficial to add the topic.

That is one interpretation. This is not the appropriate place for such statements.

Intellectual seems to be something that is absent in the response.

This is Mark’s thread and he will make the decisions as to what content he desires.

Perhaps pool all of your consideration into one place, as Mark has politely asked, if there is nothing beneficial to add the topic.

Is this true? I am pretty sure that Steinways are generally low tension scales, but I don't know about D's specifically.

Longer strings have higher tensions. Thicker strings have higher tensions. Longer pianos almost always have longer and thicker strings.

1st premise -- longer strings higher tension for a given pitch: Correct
2nd premise -- thicker strings higher tension for a given pitch: Correct.

Conclusion-- Longer pianos almost always have longer and thicker strings (and therefore have higher tension): Incorrect.

They may be longer but are not necessarily thicker. Bass strings on a 9' piano will always be significantly thinner than on a spinet. String lengths from c-52 up to c-88 on a 9' piano won't be much different from on a 45" upright.

There are 4 basic styles of stringing scales . . .
short scale/low tension
short scale/high tension
long scale/low tension
long scale high tension

Scaling style is not governed by the length of piano. For example, S&S "D" has a shorter scale (and lower tension) than the Kawai GS 100 scale which is a long scale/high tension scale. Both are 9' pianos, but that model of Kawai has a much higher tension scale.

No, it's not true.

<<Longer strings have higher tensions. Thicker strings have higher tensions. Longer pianos almost always have longer and thicker strings.- BDB>>

Dear BDB,

Uh....no? That set of statements is incorrect. Next time you look at a 9-ft Steinway I invite you to look at the lowest wound strings on the piano. Because they are soooooooo long, they do not need to be heavier! They are, in fact, much lighter. Not double-wound. Not high tension. Compared to a spinet at C1... a D's C1 is less than 1/2 the diameter of those stiff, inflexible, and unmusical hunks of copperplated junk in a Winter spinet. They are lighter and thinner in a large grand because the length provides the weight that shorter pianos must imitate with heavier strings. The opposite of your statement.

Higher tension? Uh...no again. I let the remark go by in an earlier post, because a 9-ft does have significantly more tension overall. But that is because there are simply more strings in the piano! The triple-plain wire unisons extend much further down the scale. That's why concert grands can get up near 60-70,000 lbs. of tension. But the wire is NOT thicker or heavier for any given note. The opposite is true, sir. In fact, concert grands generally use a lighter wire than an upright or spinet for any given note; because they can use the LENGTH of the piano instead of the WEIGHT of a shorter thicker string.

These are basic facts, BDB. Honest.

Surprised,
I am,

What part of "almost always" do you not understand?

Even if there are a very few strings on a large piano that are thinner than the corresponding strings on a small piano, if that resulted in lower tension overall, there would be a tremendous unbalance between the tension on the lowest plain strings and the highest wound strings, which would be difficult, if not impossible to overcome by voicing. I can probably dig up some concert grand bass string dimensions that would show that there is greater tension on them than there is on the comparable notes of a smaller piano, but you could do this yourself. I am sure that you have not.

Firstly, as i understand it, OMG in general stands for Oh My God which is profanity.

Secondly, Gerry, your statement is false and has no weight.I do take exception to Martys use of inaproriate and unnecessary language. It is simply out of place and unacceptable.

Thirdly, Marty, you continue to make shameful and unsavoury comments. Have you no decency?

Fourthly, is it not against forum rules to write offensive and vulgar language?

There is a "Notify" button at the bottom of each post. Anyone can use it to alert the moderator's attention to a post which is inappropriate for any reason.

Well, not really. Maybe comparing a concert grand to a spinet is a bit of a stretch. If you compare the notes within the Steinway instrument family, you will find that large instruments indeed have larger string gauges in the plain wire sections. Even compared to their uprights, the string gauges of the larger grands are on the heavy side.

note 23 (G)
Model:.........gauge (German wire gauges)
B...............19
C............... 20
D ............... 21


note 35 (G)
Model: .......... gauge
S ............... 17
M ............... 17.5
O ............... 17
A ............... 18
B ............... 18
C ............... 19
D ............... 19

Higher up the differences diminish, but the C and D scale still have larger gauges, right up through note 88.

source: Max Mathias: "Steinway Service Manual"

I have published stringing scales for Kawai and Baldwin grands, and they are similar to Steinway in that regard. Longer pianos may have one or two notes where they are thinner gauge than smaller pianos, but the trend is that longer pianos have the same or larger gauge wire.

Thanks Jurgen for bringing the notify button to my attention.

I am away at the moment and i am using my phone to check in and post, and the whole process is time consuming and a bit more costly as it uses up my air time. So i am battling to stay in touch and tune with the thread.

So thanks to all who have made good and helpful contributions.

Thank you,

Mark, is this tuning for a specific performance or is it a maintenance tuning?

If it is a specific performance, see if you can get to hear it or at least the rehearsal.

That will teach you a lot.

Well, not really. Maybe comparing a concert grand to a spinet is a bit of a stretch.-Jurgen

Dear Jurgen,

Apologies! I should have said; "Any given bass note". One of the huge advantages to the sound and power of the concert instruments is the sheer length of the instrument. And I was, of course, purposely using the most extreme example the came quickly to mind. D vs. Winter spinet!

Smiling,
I am,
Off to tune a Model-4,
And a 'B',
(Yesterday was the Winter and an Aeolian Chickering),

Mark,

Now that I take offense too. My statement is not false in my case. I'll kindly ask you not to call me a liar. Personally, I do NOT say OH MY GOD!!! I hate that saying. I always have. It is used far to often. I say; "oh my gosh." Or, Geez, So do many others.

2ndly, I am not trying to offend you, I merely said it how I read it.

I think this is a good place to drop it now.

Marc, if you tune electronically, there well be less difference, as the machine will compensate for you. If you tune by ear, you are in for a treat, especially if it's a nice D with lots of overtones. Have confidence, and treat the tuning as if you have tuned 100 of them before. At some point in your career, you will have tuned 100 of them, if you lean towards concert or university work. Don't over-think it. It's just another tuning. You will remember this tuning fondly years from now. You will do just fine.

Greetings,
I don't think additional tri-chords will require that much more tension, but I have a factory listing of tension in the Steinway pianos and it lists the D as having approx. 45,000 lbs. The D uses a 13 1/2 wire at the top, the S uses a 12 1/2.
Regards,

Boy, what a shame. This thread had the potential to get interesting. No one even had the chance to mention inharmonicity and how it relates to wire gauge.

Not particularely more than a Yamaha , for what I know.

medium range iH, that may also mean medium range tension

A couple of comments: That longer pianos almost always have longer and thicker strings is not a conclusion. It is an observation.

There is an additional basic style of stringing scale, one which is very common:

Scale lengths designed with no regard for tensions, with varying tensions across the range of the piano.

In the other recently dredged up topic about scales, you can see my before and after charts of a piano designed with this stringing style, alongside my revised scale for the piano.

If I remember correctly, the D has a top C measuring less than 2". The S top C measures more than 2" or at least significantly more than the D.

Anomalous but interesting.

I am not certain whether those dimensions are correct, because there can easily be sample error in that range of the piano, but even if they are, the longer speaking length would call for a thinner gauge to maintain the same tension.

An that's precisely what Ed just got thru sayin'.

This was from a check of 4-5 new NY instruments 15 yrs ago. I have another 4-5 hamburg instruments I can check on the next couple o days.

Now, I see some have offered disagreement to my statement that a Steinway D has a higher tension. Especially in the longer strings.

Before I plod through each and every comment about higher/lower/thicker/thinner

May I ask those who have so quickly commented to find the next Steinway D, B, L, M they find, take measurements and plug these measurements into the Scale sheets everyone seems to have and then come here with the facts.

I have a Steinway D, 2 Centennials, B, ,M, Style 3, 2 style 2's, 2 Mason A', a Steingraeber 212 Phoenix, Steingraeber 5'8", 2001 Bosendorfer Strauss etc, etc.... all tucked away while I move my shop around. At some point, I'll check again .. And post specifics ... why wait for me though ...

I would be happy to know, just the lenght and diameters of all the A's (or the C's) should say it all.

I am just referring to the book from Klaus Fenner that categorize 3 types of scales with low, medium and high iH

I just relate that to tension as such .

Please post some chart or data Larry, or BDB , who have it at hand.

Are the NY Steinway D's have the same scale than the Hamburg ones ?

I dont recall finding particularely thick strings in the high treble of D's or C, but if I did measur ethe whole scale I lost the files since then due to computer crash...

To measure with a metal ruler the top treble I was instructed to add 1 mm to me measure - that depending of the thickness of the ruler of course.

It is sort of a pain to post the Steinway gauges, but they are printed on the plates next to the tuning pins. They are also in their technical information. I do not have the speaking lengths for most of them, which is crucial, but I do not believe that there are any scales where a shorter piano has thicker plain strings than a longer piano.

So why do you pretend of knowing things by experience, if you don't have the speaking lenghts ? diameters are easy to find.
They dont mean much by themselves.

As a retired English professor, I would point out that abbreviating a phrase conventionally euphemises it--and thus removes any profanity. Also, while there are several synonyms for the phrase "lose one's virginity" that could qualify for the usage labels "vulgar" or "obscene," there is no coarseness in the phrase itself.

If the OP is offended, he can complain to the moderator.

Greetings,
I agree, I was more offended by the use of the phrase "loosing" ones virginity. Though loose people may lose theirs more readily, that still isn't reason enough to misspell it.
Virginity means the same thing everywhere you apply it, virgin forests, virgin steel, even those vestal thingees. There is no need for people to get their brain caught in their zipper every time they hear the word.
Regards,

Ed, if we corrected spelling on lists, we'd never get anything else done!

Yes. At least on paper

The S scale is a bit of an anomaly - the speaking length is 54 mm. The other models are all 49 mm, except for the C and D which are 50 mm.
As I understand it, Steinway grands are in low tension scale area, except for the high tension models C and D. The S is a bit of a separate animal; some might say a nice piece of Steinway furniture.

Thank you Jurgen, any idea about Boesendorfer ?

54 mm in high treble is nice, usually !

I have heard that Jurgen. Interestingly, I rebuilt an S action a year ago with Steinway Parts. With thoughtful voicing, this S is truly a nice instrument.

I am keeping an open mind on this one.

that is there one need a very good bass string maker as there are the difficulties.

One can assume that the speaking lengths of longer pianos are not shorter than those of shorter pianos. It is sufficient to know that the speaking length is not longer and the gauge is thicker to know that the tension is higher.

You know, all of this talk about certain words being used including the word "virgin" reminded me of this. And, there is nothing wrong with the terminology in American English.

Did you know that we have Virgin Pine Tree's in Michigan? Yep, we have them! It is called Hartwick Pines which is about 30 miles from my cottage where we have lots of snow and Virgin Pine Trees. They are huge and they are beautiful! Look up Hartwick Pines sometime. I've been there many times. It's a great place to visit.

Last year I tuned at a ranch where they produce extra virgin olive oil!

Has anyone ever been to the V**g*n Islands? Do they have pianos there?

No, but I've been to Intercourse PA.

Now I understand that the young cool dudes actually mean "What The Frisbee" when they use the common abbreviation.

I guess it follows then that all the abbreviations of profane phrases that a person can find on, for example "Urban Dictionary," are OK to use in any setting?

Jurgen, WTF fully written out would be obscene or vulgar, not technically profane. Mark was correct in saying that the fully written out version of OMG is profanity, because it is a religious phrase presumably out of a religious context. "Oh my God" could be a prayer; the British expletive "bloody" is a contraction of "By our Lady"; GD (euphemised alternatively as "gosh darn" or "gol dang") is a curse and could be intentionally used by religious people in a solemn pronunciation of anathema. Minnesotans (like Marty) are proverbially given to spoken euphemisms for profanity: for example, in the movie "Fargo" one character's response to absolute carnage is a heartfelt "Oh, Jeez!"

Personally, I find the full version of WTF considerably more offensive than OMG (probably because the former is clearly an obscenity), and I would agree that it probably would be inappropriate on this forum. But I'll point out that some of my former students (in their twenties and thirties) write it out as "What the frack" in text messages--approximately the equivalent of Jerry Groot's "Oh my gosh" for OMG. Finally, our list owner himself warns that calling someone else on the lists "a fricking idiot" is out of line.

Here are the total tensions for some Steinway models,

D: 45373 lbs
B: 39047 lbs
L: 36692 lbs
M: 33823 lbs
S: 32332 lbs
K: 37500 lbs Upright

Among scale designers it is well known that 52 mm is the optimal speaking lenght, no matter the size of the instrument.
Steinways are also made so.

All this time I read it as 'Oh my goodness'.

Not to be pedantic but 'Oh my god' refers to my god which might be a Tree.
If I were to say ' oh your god', that might be different.

Interesting tension information. Of course it does not indicate tension per string -- which is the more relevant measure when discussing scale designs.

It may be that the 52mm measurement is "well known" only among scale designers that don't know much. The speaking length of the top note is the foundation upon which the rest of a good scale is built. Lengths are deliberately chosen from 48mm to 60 mm. Beyond that, some makes of piano are wildly erratic from one unit to the next in actual production. (S&S being a prime example.)

My reply was to Mark on his question whether the D has got a high tension scale or not.
Compared to smaler pianos it has a higher tension, but compared to some other concert pianos it does not have a high tension scale, rather low I would say.
I remember a Blüthner concert piano from 1936. The total tension in that piano was 55115 lbs (org scale), there was a very high tension in the bass.
About Steinway, I can only speak for those made in Hamburg.
About scale design I only know about books and articles published in Germany.
You may be able to find all kinds of strange scales among all different manufacturers.

So........ For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge ........ abbreviated is ok to say?

I also have heard that most pianos (I suppose grands but.. ?)
May borrow an ideal scale in the high - medium treble, based on that 52 mm dimension to begin with.

Up to which note ? I have been told that A49 is where the lenght decreasing begin another curve this may be only one method.

That said not all pianos use the same strike length proportions may be that could relate to some differences in lenght in the treble ?

Do you know how global tension is related to the iH range , is there a direct link ? (for instance, Bluethner may be low iH pianos)

Hello Isaac,

Yes,as a matter of fact the Blüthner grands do often have an overall low IH. Possibly because the whole middle section have very long speaking lenghts.
In the facsimile of the book from J.Blüthner and H.Gretschel (1872) Jan Grossbach suggets that Blüthner actually never put much attention to scale design, but Blüthner is said to be a real master in viocing.
I think scale design back then was based on theories from Hansing, Gontershausen and others. We can still see tracks from that period in modern pianos like in the Steinway B with the almost ekstreem shortening of the bass up to E2.

Thanks, and are not Bechstein have (often) a low tension and high iH scale ?

I just wonder if the relation is so straightforward between both.

Recent Bluethner are among the best small grands I ever seen.
Sauter may also have such long lenghts in the mediums (?)

Measured a 1905 Ibach grand at 90 mm (12 gauge I think). Pros and cons v Steinway?

Not likely. Measure it again.

I did, but I'll check again this evening.

Absolutely correct. 90mm should exceed the breaking length for piano wire at that pitch. I restrung a Kawai GS-70 that was 60mm and that was over 80% of breaking point. (It is also an explanation of why it has such a shriekingly piercing tone, as well). I changed the tension by lowering the wire 1/2 size, but, of course, that didn't change the breaking percent or inharmonicity.

Quite right, the actual speaking length is 54 mm. I did think, "Euphemisms, what is the tension going to be?" but my mind must have been elsewhere at the time

I hope Mark will still recount his experiences with the Steinway despite all the detours in this thread.