M&H

[Mark Dierauf]

Jim -

  I suspect that he's de-valuing the piano because of its three bridge
design. The fellow who taught me tuning used to wholesale the AA's to the
southwest, and keep the A's to rebuild locally. He similarly denigrated the
old 3 bridge S&S A's. He refered to them all as "57 bass [string] dogs", and
we students thought of giving him our own redesign of the Texas flag - a
dog's head with 57 bass strings! (no offense, Texans!)
  In my mind it's a tradeoff between a less powerful bass with a rather
nasal low tenor in the model A and a bigger bass with "that third bridge" (I
don't know how else to describe it) sound in the tenor. I'm always tempted
to replace the wound tenor trichords with wound bichords in these pianos
when they're rebuilt, but although it helps with tuning (33% less wild
string problems!) the fundamental tone deficiencies are still there. Like
Steinway, M & H eventually replaced this sized model with a two bridge
version before discontinuing then altogether.

- Mark

>Et Al;
> I just had a strange conversation with a prospective customer vis a vis
M&H,
>specifically models 'A' and 'AA'. I was told that, according to his current
>tech,
>the 'A' was a good solid instrument but that the 'AA' has/had structural
>deficiencies and was not as good an instrument as the 'A'.
>
>Question: I've never heard anything of this nature before have any of y'all
??
>Jim Bryant (FL)
>