Piano Size & Shape

[Phillip L Ford]

On Sun, 2 Dec 2001 09:22:06   
 Delwin D Fandrich wrote:

>The idea was to get the bass bridge away from the left left side rim. With
>the strings running straight back this placed the bridge quite close to the
>rim, restricting its motion. One solution--that tried by Chickering--angled
>all of the strings from C-88 down--toward the center of the board.
>Acoustically this worked quite well, as it also did aesthetically. But the
>bridge suffered: With a high tension scale--say much of anything above 150
>lbs or so--stress on the terminating bridge pins proved to be a problem.
>Every one I've seen has had bridge pins splitting the bridge cap. With a
>material such as the Delignit beech laminate this could probably be solved,
>but at the time it seemed to be an insurmountable problem that only over
>stringing could solve.

When you say that all the strings were angled toward the
center of the board does that mean the strings at the top
end are angled to the left and the strings at the bottom
end are angled to the right?  Or are all the strings angled
to the right?  Why would there be more load on the bridge
pins with this design than with a conventional design?  It
seems that if the string makes a straight line from the
tuning pin to the hitch pin then the displacement caused
by the bridge pins would be the only thing causing load
on the bridge pins.  It seems this would be the same whether
the string was straight or angled.

Phil


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Phillip Ford
Piano Service & Restoration
1777 Yosemite Ave - 215
San Francisco, CA  94124