"I" Bridge

[Ron Nossaman]

I tuned an Astin Weight last week. Hadn't seen one of these in a long time
so I took a little time and looked it over a bit. The plate is a looooong
way from the soundboard and the bridges are super tall to accommodate. The
tenor bridge has an "I" beam cross section, is over 60mm tall, and is kerfed
(about 20mm deep) in a few places on the bottom where it is glued to the
soundboard! Probably would have been too stiff, with all that height,
without them. The back side isn't notched at all. The bass bridge and apron
are the biggest, tallest, and most massive that I ever saw, by about a
factor of two. This thing is HUGE. The last two unisons in the upper bass
(29 & 30) are plain wire trichords, which kind of intrigued me. This is the
first time I can recall seeing that. I would love to get a look at the
string scale of one of these if anyone has rescaled one and has the original
measurements on file. I couldn't get to the back side easily because the
piano was too deeply built in to the decor (buried) so I don't know what the
rib set looked like, though I do know that these pianos don't have back
posts. The soundboard "grain" was horizontal, but it looked like a laminated
board (again, I couldn't get a look at an edge to see just what it was).
Anybody know for sure? It had kind of an odd sound, but with a little more
voicing than my quickie K-Mart pot scrubber brushing, it would be quite
adequate. Just thought it was interesting.

 Ron