Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?

[Farrell]

Thanks Del, for the thoughts. I am regulating the action in my shop (no
spills on hammers) and will be returning it to piano next week. I will check
out piano closely. Thanks again.

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message -----
From: "Delwin D Fandrich" <pianobuilders@olynet.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Farrell" <mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com>
> To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Sent: November 10, 2001 6:16 AM
> Subject: Bad Tenor/Bass Scale Break?
>
>
> > 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).
>
> I would suspect something. Clearly, these are not the finest examples of
the
> pianobuilders art, but you shouldn't be hearing strong tonal abnormalities
> like you describe. If you were having problems with just the low tenor I'd
> say look at its proximity to the inner rim. But that wouldn't explain the
> upper bass, the bridge of which is usually excessively mobile on designs
> like this.
>
>
> >
> > Should I be suspecting a loose bridge or two here or some other
structural
> > failure?
>
> Some other ideas--
>     Could something have been spilled on the hammers?
>     Could something have been spilled on the strings?
>     Is the sound you're hearing restricted to wrapped strings? Or are some
> of the plain         steel string unisons in the tenor also affected?
>     Is this a laminated soundboard? If so, could it be delaminating?
>     Are the ribs intact? And glued to the soundboard?
>     Are the bridges intact? Any splits? How are the bridge pins?
>     Could somebody have wedged something between the bellybraces (are
there
>         any?) and the soundboard to 'restore crown?'
>     Could the bridges (or any part of the soundboard) be contacting the
> plate?
>     Could something be wedged underneath the plate against the soundboard?
>
>
> >
> > 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).
>
> Well, no one wasted a whole lot of time 'designing' these pianos. But, no,
> it probably didn't sound like you're describing when it was new. While the
> low tenor will suffer from the hockey-stick bridge, the upper bass would
be
> unaffected. And even with sloppy design work and sloppy manufacturing it
> isn't all that hard to come up with a decent upper bass even in one of
these
> little things.
>
> With a good tuning, decent hammers, a reasonable action regulation and a
bit
> of voicing even a piano like this should sound fairly musical through most
> of the scale. (Just ignore the first octave or so.) So, yes, I'd be
looking
> for something to be 'wrong.'
>
> Del
>
>
>
>