Bird-Cages/Fogger/Snide remarks

[John Delacour]

At 9:24 PM +0000 12/21/01, Barrie Heaton wrote:

>Go to this page and scroll down until you get to the Bluthner and
>vertical strung button
>http://www.uk-piano.org/history/main/history_1900_2000.html

Yes, it's obvious most of our American friends have never met with a 
really high-class overdamped piano, but there are plenty in Europe 
and Blüthner's overdamped uprights whether overstrung or straight 
strung were of the very highest quality.  Ibach and Brinsmead also 
made very good overdamped pianos and there are many German overstrung 
overdamped pianos of tolerable quality.

Certain of the good upright makers such as Broadwood, Bechstein, 
Kirkman opted very early for the underdamper mechanism and never used 
overdampers.  Brinsmead used underdampers in the 1860's and his 
patents show underdampers but he continued to produce overdampers 
even for very fine pianos until quite late in the century.

Generally speaking only the Germans produced overdamper pianos with 
pretensions to high quality and 95% of overdamper pianos found in 
England are at best ordinary and at worst broken up in the great 
piano-smashing years, though a few remain.  A neighbour called me in 
to look at hers the other day and it was very ordinary and valueless 
but playing fine and quite tunable and not even bad-sounding.  I told 
her to advertise it in the paper and it will be perfect for a 
beginner and give no trouble.

However, all these pianos have a pretty normal tape-check action; the 
Englishman Wornum, incidentally, should not be credited with this - 
it was invented by a Frenchman and copied by Wornum.  Before these, 
there were pianos with the sticker action and the Costa action and 
these are usually truly awful.

Apart from the different feel of the weighted dampers, as opposed to 
the sprung underdampers, the overdamper arrangement has the advantage 
of silencing the overtones more efficiently than underdampers; the 
problem is that the low partials are not so well damped, but when 
well set up, especially the Blüthner, the damping can be quite 
tolerably good.

As to tuning, I've never heard anyone raise it as an issue.  Most 
tuners in England, and all the tuners I have ever employed, tune 
without the aid of any electronic acronyms and use a Papps wedge.  I 
use a wooden Papps wedge for all uprights, though I admit I don't 
like tuning uprights at all.

Papps, incidentally, must have been quite an interesting chap.  I 
think he was based in Portsmouth (Barrie ??) and he invented a solid 
steel wrestplank with holes in the shape of a rounded wedge.  The 
wrestpins just sit in these holes and the tension of the strings is 
sufficient to pull them down towards the point of the wedge where 
they  are gripped solid.  Tuners who have come across these pianos 
say the system works fine contrary to all preconceptions.  I've never 
come across one but I expect Barrie has.

JD