Scaling questions

[Newton Hunt]

Tom, I thought I would put my two cents worth in.

It is very likely that the bass scale WAS changed by the string maker.  The two
major suppliers of strings tend to shorten the unwrapped end near the agraffe.

It generally is not possible to get a perfect scale in the lowest area of the
bridge on any piano but with a little math, a spread sheet, or one of the
available scaling programs available, you can do a decent job of deriving a
good scale for this piano.

Inharmonicity is the first factor to consider, tension is second, elongation
(breaking percent) then power.

With a spread sheet you can look at the graphs of these factors and it will be
very obvious where changes need to be changed.

What you need to measure is:
      speaking length of all notes, 1 to 88
      diameter of all strings (big D)
      diameter of bass string cores (little d)
      length of unwrapped ends (front and back)
      Hitchpin to speaking bridge pin lengths on all wound strings.
      Make a paper pattern for your safety net.

An alternative is to send the bass strings and data to David Sanderson and he
will design and make a set of bass strings and treble scale that will be the
very best possible for that piano, not cheap but superior.

I prefer to design my own bass strings and send a set of specifications to the
string maker so any error is mine, but theirs.

Lots of luck, you have a challenge ahead, but it is not as difficult as you may
think.
      Newton
      nhunt@rci.rutgers.edu