Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?

[Farrell]

I am regulating an action out of a 4' 7" 1973 G. Steck Aeolian. (Isn't there
some kind of law against manufacturing pianos that are shorter than they are
wide?) I listened to the voicing on the piano prior to action removal by
going up and down the keyboard. The middle tenor and up sounded like a
piano. The middle bass and below sounded like a typical spinet bass. The low
tenor sounded like loud rubber bands, and the upper bass was very, very weak
and ultra spinet-sounding (both effects increasing as you approached the
break). The bass/tenor break on this piano is tonally by far the worst
example of a bad break I have ever heard (by some large multiple).

Should I be suspecting a loose bridge or two here or some other structural
failure? Or is it possible that this piano was actually designed/built this
way with the observed tonal characteristics? Is the observed
blubbery-rubber-band sound from the low tenor simply an extreme example of
the effects of lowering the tension of the strings in that area to get the
desired pitch (hockey-stick-bridge and all that). I read references to
pianos such as the Steinway B with a poor tenor/bass break - I gotta admit
that my ear is simply not experienced to pick on that design as having a
poor break - I do hear it in many small pianos, but not in such a big one
(I'm not saying it's not there, I just haven't had the ear training to hear
it). But my question here is am I observing the same phenomena, only
magnified by a poor-design factor of 10,000? And why the super poor sounding
upper bass (way worse than most spinets - super-nasal sounding and very
weak)?

Just trying to learn and figger this stuff out.

Terry Farrell