All, While I haven't read everything on this thread. >In a concert grand I would expect the tension on the singles either >to be roughly constant or even to fall somewhat towards the >transition to bichords. Perhaps you have measured such scales, but tension normally will slightly rise towards the single/bichord transition. >. . As to your 328 lb., I would say such a tension is dangerous on a >No. 22 core and would not exceed 307 lbs if I wanted it to last. Depends a bit on whether the counterbearing angle is too severe or not. With a lower counterbearing angle, higher tensions can be used safely. >. . . . .Over 25 years of restringing pianos and making strings for >the trade, I've had the opportunity of analysing the best and the >worst of pianos. By and large, the best pianos seem to have been >designed along similar lines, with a few notable exceptions. But even the so called best are not necessarily well scaled. Some of the so called best pianos have some of the worst scales in the business. >> >As to "blending the tone", by which I understand matching as far as >>>possible the harmonic balance of the adjacent break notes and not merely >>>avoiding the most shocking of breaks, here the actual design and details of >> >manufacture of the strings also plays an important part. along with the placement of the bridges on the sound board (the surface area and stiffness of which is also a factor). Much of this is beyond the scope of a rebuild. Many manufacturers place the high end of the bass bridge too far away from the rim. Boomy higher basses abound. >> I heard someone >> >say not long ago in front of an audience that a piano needs to be 9'6" long >>>in order to achieve a satisfactory break between steel and covered strings! Sounds like the speaker should have been amongst the audience. >. . . Without changing any bridges or anything, a perfectly >acceptable break can be achieved on any reasonable-sized grand or >upright simply through good string scaling Can't agree. There are pianos which have such a poor choice of sound board area or bridge placement or both, that string scaling alone will not fix the tonal problems. Del alluded to this in an earlier post on this thread. >There are, of course, cases where I would love to reshape the long >bridge if the job would stand it, but if a piano has lasted 100 >years sounding good with a less than perfectly shaped bridge, I >reckon it deserves to carry on for another 100 or so without losing >its defects of character. Sure if its sill in one piece. But for some of the earlier scales, you can't achieve that much since the design so far away from contemporary thinking. For those of serious intent, build you own piano. That way everything is possible. >For example, it is the high tension in the tenor of a Blüthner and >the unusually thin cores or the monochords that help to make up the >"Blüthner sound". Sure Julius was a wonderful piano maker, but that was back then. If Julius was alive today he would probably join the charge into new scaling, and rethinking out all sorts of parameters. Plate weight/hysteresis and rigidity/effective sound board area/sound board stiffness/sound board perimeter flexibility/scale design/strike ratio/hammers - its all part of tone building. This is why modifying scales alone won't fix tonal problems for all instruments. Ron O -- ______________________________ Website: http://www.overspianos.com.au Email: mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au ______________________________
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC