Early Steinway Grand

Kent Swafford kswafford@earthlink.net
Sat, 6 Nov 1999 09:11:55 -0600


Bdshull@aol.com wrote:

>You mention that the piano's service history has not been so bad - does it 
>have a decent treble sound still?
>

>If you are certain that this piano has only a 3 digit serial number, then 
>the 
>design had quite a history for Steinway - I would like to know about this. 
>
>What type of action rails/frame does it have?


Paul S. Larudee wrote:

>If it's really that early it would have to have agraffes all the way up
>instead of a V-bar.  It seems rather obvious, but since it hasn't been
>mentioned until now, which is it?
>
>Paul S. Larudee, RPT
>Richmond, CA

I believe it may have had agraffes all the way up. There was no duplex. 
Given the modifications that the piano had undergone I would not trust 
that the sound was that of the original, but the piano had _a_ Steinway 
sound that was good, if not _the_ Steinway sound. The scaling of the 
instrument set off the "minimum single octave" limits in CyberTuner's 
tuning calculator, which is to say that the relative inharmonicity of the 
various parts of the scale was not ideal. I must say that as good as this 
piano sounded, there is no mystery as to why Steinway met with the 
success it did. I did not attempt to pull the action. Obviously, this 
instrument is well known to some piano technician(s) somewhere; perhaps 
we will be able to compare notes someday.

Kent Swafford


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