Agraffes on Bridge

[James Ellis]

I was going back over some old CAUT postings that I had saved for future
reference, and I came across one by Otto Keyes on April 8, 2004.  Otto
mentioned a 5'7" Sohmer with agraffes on the main bridge.  He mentioned
that the piano had a "brassy" sound, and attributed it to the brass
agraffes on the bridge.  I don't think that is the reason for the brassy
sound.

I recently encountered one of these old Sohmers - a 100-plus-year-old 6-ft
that had recently been refinished and restrung.  It was in an expensive
house in a very up-scale exclusive area out on a lake - fenced, gated,
private boat dock, and all that stuff.  It was to be used for a formal
recital with several other instruments - strings and woodwinds.  The owner
told me the piano had been kept tuned, nevertheless, it was quite flat when
I found it.  I knew it had been designed for A=435 Hz, but all things
considered, I thought it would come up to A=440 OK.  I was wrong.

In doing the pitch raise, I did NOT over-pull on this one - not on a piano
this old with an unknown history.  Nevertheless, when I got up into the
treble, strings began to break.  Then it dawned on me:  Just eyeballing it,
the speaking lengths of those treble strings looked abnormally long to me.
I did some measuring, and indeed whey were.  The speaking length of No. 88
was like 2.5 inches, and A5 was like about two inches longer than on most
modern pianos.  With this in mind, I concluded that there was no way this
piano was going to come up to A=440 without breaking treble strings all
over the palce.  In fact, it was pushing the limit even at the A=435 Hz.

And that's not all.  I measured some wire sizes.  The entire top two
octaves were strung with #12.5 wire.  As I say, it had been restrung.
Whatever the original size wire was, I don't know.

I had to inform the owner that I would put the piano at its design pitch of
A435 Hz, and she would have to make other arrangements regarding the recital.

I could not find any evidence that any bridges or the plate had been moved
from the original positions.  So, I'm thinking that "brassy" sound Otto was
hearing may have been due to the scaling of the piano, and not to the
agraffes themselves.

One other point:  The construction of that bridge, with all the strings
elevated right behind the agraffes, is bound to make the bridge want to
roll toward the rear - strings pulling up on the agraffes in front, etc. 

I would like to know who else out there has run into similar situations
with these old Sohmer grands?

Sincerely, Jim Ellis