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Baldwin Restoration Project- 1926 Baldwin Model H 5' 8" Grand Piano Page2
Next we'll measure the downbearing on a large sampling of the strings and we see that it is not constant. The high end and the low end have enough downbearing but it is low in the middle. This is pretty normal for an older piano. After a good go round with a once through check, we'll go back a second and third and fourth time just to get a good feel of the downbearing. It's more feel than an actual measurement since this piano is so close to having downbearing in the middle. This is known as a fallen crown, or lacking crown. Time now to remove the bass strings. We've carefully felt out and recorded the downbearing observation and we are ready to begin unstringing. We start with the bass strings since they must be carefully removed and sent off for reproduction.
Now well take off all the tension on just the bass strings, a quarter turn down on each tuning pin skipping every other pin. Then going in reverse we'll loosen the pins we skipped a quarter turn down. Now we'll loosen them until they have a big coil bulging from the tuning pin, this is about a full turn down from pitch. They are loose now so we'll cut them. These get cut close to the tuning pin with a very good pair of compound wire cutters. The wire that goes away from the tuning pin will be supported so there's no string bounce to scratch the plate anymore than it already is.
The picture I haven't shown is numbering the strings. On the hitch pin end, they get placed on a piece of wire sequentially so they keep their position in order. On the next page, we'll do a quick re-measure of downbearing after the bass strings come off.
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