strings 'n stuph

[Ron Nossaman]

>My thought was that their inventory of bass strings is never exactly the same
>quantity of the same string numbers, and they make quantities of numbers as
>they need them.  When they switched to copper, they had some leftover iron for
>that number and decided to use them rather than let them go to waste.  On the
>other hand, maybe someone just found a quantity of that number that had been
>misplaced long ago and decided to use them for the same reason and because
they
>were still in good shape.
>
>Paul

Hi Paul,
"When they switched to copper"? When would that have been? Are there a
bunch of Gulbransen verticals out there somewhere that are a month or more
older than these that have steel wrapped bass strings? Has anyone seen one?
Hands? If it's design change overlap, how about the other interim pianos
with 9 leftover steel bichords, then eight, then seven? As for the leftover
strings found in storage and installed rather than let them go to waste -
that must be it. Surely a manufacturer would take whatever time and effort
was necessary to cycle obsolete parts back into the updated production run
so they could save the $0.25 per piano it cost them to make those strings
so they could be lost in storage. In fact, there are probably an equivalent
number of more expensively produced copper wound strings in storage
somewhere that were displaced from the assembly line to accommodate the use
of the old steel wound foundlings. Just think of the income opportunity
here for someone with the ambition and resourcefulness to track down those
leftover copper wound orphans and travel the country retrofitting all those
old mistreated Gulbransens to restore them to the original glory they were
deprived of at birth.

Now I don't need to know badly enough to drive 50 miles and spend an hour
taking scale measurements which may or may not tell me anything in the
final analysis in any case, but I really am curious to know why they went
to the trouble to put steel wound strings in one bichord unison, surrounded
by copper wound bichords. It had to cost them more to do this, and I'm a
firm believer that a manufacturer isn't going to waste a nickle without a
reason, so why was it done?

The only thing I've come up with by way of speculation is that they might
have had a longitudinal mode howler there, possibly accidentally designing
in the worst possible dimensional combination, and settled on the steel
wrap substitution as a more expedient and cheaper alternative to starting
over with the scale design. A sort of post-disaster back patch. I just
wanted to know if anyone had any information on it.

This isn't an earth shaker, I know, but the information has considerably
greater potential for future usefulness, to me at least, than Glenn Gould's
taste in pianos. Not that that isn't informative. It is, just not useful.

Ron N