DENRO Wrest/Tuning Pins
Back by popular demand! Such is the high quality of these excellent Japanese wrest pins that many of my regular customers asked me to re-stock because they preferred the quality as well as the value for money when compared to the German alternatives. The outstanding quality coupled with new substantially lower prices enabled by the fall in the value of the Japanese Yen make DENRO pins a winning combination, and most sizes are once again available from stock.
The following sizes are normally available in the blued finish in sets of 250, but please be aware that from time to time some sizes are out of stock due to frustratingly variable demand!
Diameter (mm) Available lengths (mm)
6.75 60
6.90 57, 60, 63
7.00 57, 60, 63
7.10 51, 57, 60, 63
7.25 57, 60, 63
7.35 57, 60, 63
7.50 60, 63
Also available:
Julius Klinke German Wrest/Tuning Pins
All sizes available, blued and nickel plated finishes in sets of 250
Bee (“Biene”) Brand premium quality German Wrest/Tuning Pins
All sizes available, blued and nickel plated finishes in sets of 250
Heckscher & Company and Wrest Pins – a brief history
In the late 19th and early 20th century my grandfather, Leo Heckscher, had been the agent for Julius Klinke in the U.K. and he sold huge numbers of wrest pins to the expanding piano factories. Inevitably the outbreak of war in 1914 caused a huge supply problem for the industry and my grandfather in particular.
In December 1914 he and an engineer, one William Tanner, formed a new company which traded as Wrest Pins Limited with the primary purpose of manufacturing wrest pins at a new factory in Ealing, West London. The company appears to have thrived. Taking a month at random, in October 1924 wrest pin sales to the piano factories amounted to 5,874 sets in a single month, such was the size of the industry at that time.
Of course it didn’t last. The depression caused huge problems, the piano industry declined substantially, and in 1971 Wrest Pins Limited was sold to Barratt & Robinson, one of the London based piano factories. Actually they never did pay any money for it, and soon their own financial problems overtook them. Part of the agreement had been that Heckscher & Company would distribute the pins to the other factories and the repair workshops, but such were Barratt & Robinson’s problems that by the late seventies or early eighties no pins were available due to their inability to pay for the required steel.
It was at this point that we forged an excellent working relationship with Nippon Denro in Japan, now re-named DENRO. In truth the machinery back in London was in need of major investment which was not forthcoming due to the rapidly diminishing size of the British piano industry. The Denro pins represented a massive improvement in quality which is maintained to this day.
Incidentally, it is thought that the derivation of the longstanding term term “wrest” in relation to tuning pins comes from the old English meaning “to turn”.
Please email me: martin@heckscher.co.uk or phone me (01494 758713) for more details.