[CAUT] Stuart & Son on NPR

[Edward Sambell]

Broadwood made some uprights with bridge agraffes. Very nice sounding, but the 
agraffes were attached with a screw, and became loose. The pinblocks were poor 
too. But it was an interesting piano; the entire plate, strings and pinblock 
could be removed as one unit. There is one in the Cantos museum, Calgary, 
Alberta.

Ted Sambell. 





________________________________
From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
To: caut at ptg.org
Sent: Thu, January 20, 2011 3:33:39 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Stuart & Son on NPR

On Jan 20, 2011, at 9:53 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote:

> And current condition. What was it, 70 years old, with a concave soundboard? I 
>like the idea of bridge agraffes, generally, and thought the stamped cheapie was 
>brilliant, and had the potential to be as good in function as any made.
> Ron N


And actually the stamped part is not that important from a tonal point of view, 
looking at the patent drawing. It just holds the other things in place and 
spreads the strings. The actual bearing is separate pieces of "wood or metal" (I 
think I'd choose metal <G>). I would expect, though, that the screw holding it 
to the bridge might get loose over time (the wood would compress against it like 
a flange), so you might end up with a very serious lack of positive coupling of 
string to bridge (thinking of Ed's description of the whistling sound). But it 
seems like the real downfall of the idea was the fact that it was a cheap 
substitute, so was likely to be put together with less care, and on cheaper and 
less well-designed instruments.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Twain

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