>> I have seen the difference that restoring the original scale >>makes, as a stand-alone change, and it is dramatic. I would argue that most, if not all, of the tonal improvement that you hear is due to the newness of the replacement wire, regardlesss of the actual sizes employed. IOW, new #18 wire will sound better than old #18, or #17, or #19. It matters less that the wire "should" be some other size than #18. I routinely rescale the pianos that I restring, including (the smaller model) Steinways, and can say from experience that once you get above the problematic tenor area, wire size makes little difference to the tone - within reason, of course. However, changing treble wire sizes *can* make a noticable difference in the inharmonicity - enough to change the way the piano tunes. >> It seems that the original factory scales used on the modern Steinway >>grands are still a requirement for the pianos to sound as designed. I >>haven't heard an alteration yet, that I liked. I think that if you check the replacement bass strings that you get from Mapes for your next Steinway rebuild, you will find them quite different from the originals. Since Steinway gets their new strings from Mapes, all their new pianos would be alterations from the original.
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