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Looking for ways to get some better sound out of the bass strings on a Brambach that I am about to finish. A few have some decent tone but others have a dull, thuddy, choked sound. I had to clean them up to get off some tarnish and verdigris. Should the next step be to slacken them and do the rolling knot thing ? At this point I do not think the client will want to spring for new bass strings so I am looking for other ideas. the dampers are quite mashed so I'm not sure if they are causing some of the problem with loose felt muting off part of the string. I'm checking it out later this am because I had a problem with a triple string where part of the old damper felt had fallen off under the damper where you couldn't see it and was wedged betten the middle and right strings. Maybe some changes with the damper timeing and height will help ?

I did the rolling knot thing with the bass strings in my then ~87-year-old upright and it made a VAST difference in the tone in the bass. (I have since restrung the entire piano, though.)

Getting a piano up to pitch helps more than anything else. I've had mixed results with twisting the bass strings, but it's easy enough to try. Schaff has a tool for doing this, #262, which will get you out of a lot of other problems as well, so you should have it. I have replaced just the lowest strings on the piano, the singles, and that can often be enough to tide one over, especially if they were steel, rather than copper wound.

Jimbob,

Not every set *can* be brought back to life, so be prepared for that eventuality.

First I would try a half-twist. Just do one string, see how it sounds. If satisfactory, do the whole set. If not satisfactory, try the rolling knot. If satisfactory, do the whole set. If not satisfactory, well, just incorporate the experience into your future trouble-avoidance system. Personally I would be very reluctant to take on an old Brambach project at any level of budget, if it's one of those real lightly built cheapie models. Still, it's a learning experience for you.

Regards,

Rick Clark

In addition to the above, I don't recall if you had filed the hammers. If not, try that as well. The soundboard crown might have collapsed as well. Brambachs are great pianos to do some learning on. They were nasty to begin with, so any mistakes won't hurt the piano much. The biggest lesson from this adventure is probably to pick and choose your repairs carefully. Many pianos are not worth major repairs, and this is one of them.

A poorly built piano can not be made better by rebuilding it. It will always be a poorly built piano.

I use this simple rule for grands, "if it lacks the large wood beams underneath, it's a poor quality, cheaply built piano, and not worth doing major repairs or rebuilding". These beams help support the rim, which supports the soundboard crown. No beams, no rim support, no crown, = lousy sound.

I concur that the Brambach is one of the make and design pianos that may prove to be the most disappointing in trying to get something out of it. Even if you had brand new strings, you might well find a weak sounding bass. It really is the kind of grand piano that people bought just so they could put it in front of the picture window for the neighbors to see as they drove by. The scale design is poor by anyone's standards yet few people who would know how to rescale one would care to do so.

Nevertheless, the former governor of our state had one that he brought into the Governor's Mansion. It had been rebuilt as well as one could be. He also had the room where it was put remodeled into a "music studio". He was known for some pretty wasteful spending. My guess is that the remodeling cost more than the piano was worth, including the cost of rebuilding it.

The drawing of knots and twisting generally is an effective way of doing what I have always called "rejuvenating" bass strings on older pianos (grand or upright) where they have gone dead and/or tubby due to a build up of dust and corrosion. A better, more effective and easier way of doing this is to use a wire wheel to polish them.

A high speed polisher is best but you can even use a drill that has a fairly high speed if you don't want to invest in a polisher. A wire wheel can be found at a hardware store. Get the finest wire (not coarse) that you can find. The dampers have a stop rail that limits how high they can lift. Reach inside and loosen this rail and prop up the dampers as high as they will go.

Get some eye protection goggles, a dust mask and hearing protection because the procedure will be very loud and may throw hazardous fine particles into the air. With the tension still fully on, run the spinning wire wheel up and down the wound strings everywhere that you can reach, avoiding the damper felt, of course. You'll see that this cleans and brightens up the wound strings beautifully, making them look like new in some cases.

It will make some frightening, howling, ghost like sounds. One guy who had a 100 year old upright in a basement recording studio recorded those sounds while I did it and used samples of the sound as eerie effects that could be produced in no other way.

In addition to just making them look good, the wire wheel will make them shake and rattle against each other enough to release all of the corrosion that has been giving them that dead or tubby sound. After polishing the strings as they are, loosen each one 3/4 turn (3 quarter turn cranks) with the tuning hammer. At the hitch pin end, pull up the slack and lift off the hitch pin. The twisting tool is nice but you can also do it with a small pair of vice grips.

Don't be afraid to give the string a full turn twist or even two but beyond that won't do usually do any more good. Sometimes it does take a couple of full turns to get the rattle out of a wound string. If they are just dead or tubby, one full turn should do the trick. It is a good idea to do this one at a time. Loosen, twist, then reattach and pull back up to approximate pitch using the neighboring string as a reference. This will keep from upsetting the piano any more than necessary.

After twisting all of the strings, you will see that the brighter, underside is now largely exposed. You can give them all another quick polish, getting rid of any more corrosion which might be exposed. Now, tune them all back up to approximate pitch. Go back to the loops around the hitch pins and gently tap them down because many of them may have ridden slightly high up on the pins. Now, give them all another quick pitch raise tuning.

If the bass bridge has cracks, splits or loose pins, loosening all of the strings and putting the hitch pin loops onto a stiff piece of wire to hold them in order will give you the chance to make epoxy or CA glue repairs to the bass bridge before you do the twisting operation. If the bass bridge pins are loose, doing an epoxy or CA glue repair will provide better contact and thus will also contribute to an improvement in tone. If you can pull the pins out with your fingers, they are too loose and need the epoxy or CA repair.

Good luck with the project.

Thanks for all of the replys. Bill- using a wire brush sounds like a good idea. I was thinking of using my mutispeed Dremel tool with wire brush and buffing pad attachments. Since I cleaned the soundboard I will put some plastic or paper on it to keep the crud, dust and wire ends from making a mess. Overall the piano is slowly getting some life back in it. The pedal box was cracked in 3 places at the left pedal mortise but is now fixed with new felts. I used CA glue to tighten up some tuning pins and it worked great. I have about an hour of work to do filling some oversized screw holes on the keyslip and elsewhere but I do plan to work on 2 or 3 of the worst bass strings.

I've never tried a dremel tool for that but it may work just as well. A larger tool gets the strings really shaking but a small one will probably clean and poilsh the strings til they look like new.

Good luck with the project.