Pure Tone Strings

[Newton Hunt]

> 
> > Given one note location and speaking length every wire size will
> > break at the same pitch when drawn up that high.
> > 
> This is not true, but you can be excused Newton since even Grant O'Brien

A while back, a long while, Steve Fairchild and I discussed
experiments he was conducting upon treble sound, hammer hardness
and string breakage.  He made some top octave hammers out of
aluminum for the experiment and, using modern American wire, was
trying to find the loudest tone while varying different wire sizes
then raise the pitch of the wire until it broke.  No sense is going
from a 14 to 1 28 gauge wire but within the range of 12 to 16 gauge
the wire broke at about the same pitch.

That was the basis of my statement.  Steve's conclusion, wire size
will not appreciable improve tonal power and a too long speaking
length cannot be improved with different sized wire.

It is good that we have people like you around with the real
technical data at your finger tips to correct us that think that we
know less than we thought.

I agree with you that more research is needed.  Factories are
trying to make louder and louder pianos, mostly by changing the
weight of hammers and some scale improvements but more fundamental
research has to be made about our assumptions about things like
bridges, ribs, soundboards, rims, plates, wire, scales and so on.

We reach a point of diminishing returns when changing action
geometry, hammer weights and hammer hardnesses.  Peoples hands do
not change but they sure can be damaged.

I remember old Bluthners that had a tonal range, volume AND tone
change, far out stripping most modern pianos with rock hard
hammers.  Those old hammers could play a beautiful but projecting
pppp then play a ffff that had real steel underneath.  This could
have been scaling as well, soundboard, ribs, bridges, etc., but if
I could make a piano sound like those old Bluthners I would die a
happy man.  I really think hard hammers is going in the wrong
direction.

People are so accustomed to having sound pumped into their head
with Walkmans and ghetto blasters that they have forgotten how to
listen, how to hear the music, how to appreciate silence, how to
think for themselves.  I think making bigger and bigger halls and
orchestras and heavier and harder hammers is going along the same
line, and I HATE IT!!!!

I am just a poor unpolished semi enjaneer with antiquated ideas
that we have passed the golden years of piano making by truly great
craftsmen who were also musicians and they, through real art,
accomplished so much more than we with our math and degrees and
piece workers can ever accomplish again without truly rethinking
the entire concept of "piano".  _I_ don't have the wherewithal,
money, time, skill, knowledge and other resources to do so and
neither do most factories, now.

It is people like you that keep pushing the envelope that will,
eventually, push us into the real 21st century of piano making.

Keep at it.

Best regards,

		Newton