Soundboard Thoughts-Mehlin

[Gregory Torres]

List:

I can't say I have actually studied Mehlin's designs but the Mehlin's I have
run across have all been very good sounding instruments. I once owned a
tiger-oak Mehlin upright that, when acquired was +300 cents flat and when
pulled up to pitch it just "came alive" and had an incredible sound.

A few years ago I did some action work on a Mehlin 5' 4" baby grand with the
slanted soundboard and violin type bridge (bass bridge was tall and had oval
holes in the middle) and this piano just "sang".  Don't remember how old it
was but I think it was made in the 30's or 40's maybe. It sounded "big",
more like a 6 footer...

Regards,
Greg Torres

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Moore <danmoore@ih2000.net>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Tuesday, December 09, 1997 5:05 AM
Subject: Re: Soundboard Thoughts


(snipped)


>Have you or anyone else studied Paul G. Mehlin's ideas?  I've always
thought that he
>had been a violin maker in Germany, but got into piano design &
manufacturing when
>he came to the U.S.  I've only seen one Mehlin 9 ft. concert grand, but it
did, in
>fact, have the slanting soundboard and narrower treble bridge.  It also had
a hole
>in the sound board at end of the bass bridge.  We could never figure out if
it was
>supposed to be a "tone hole" like on a violin, or perhaps a drain since the
board
>was slanted.  Unfortunately, the piano was in pretty bad shape - it sounded
>terrible!  Nobody had the guts to put out the money to rebuild it for fear
that,
>because of the odd design, it would still sound terrible.