Tuned duplex

[John Delacour]

At 2:48 pm +1000 21/4/02, Overs Pianos wrote:

| I've seen one DD. The model (about 180 cm) I inspected, at the 
| Australasian Piano Tuners and Technician's Convention in July 2000, 
| had the rear duplex lengths pretty well tuned relative to the 
| speaking length. I didn't note the harmonic series chosen, but it 
| featured small radius half round brass bars sitting on a metal 'skid 
| plate'.

Schimmel now has new models.  I had a private viewing of these at Frankfurt a few weeks ago and talked to König, their technical director.  I was noting the duplex arrangement on all the makes I saw (including Bechstein!) and came away with a head buzzing with variations on a theme.  However, I noted that Schimmel's arrangement is about the most intricate.  So far as I recall, the duplex plate is of brass and this is channeled out to hold cylindrical steel bridges about 2mm in diameter.  In other words the bridges are not independently movable since they sit in a machined trough.

Fazioli uses a polished stainless steel plate with machined triangular brass bridges and several other makers have also switched to the brass triangles.  I'm afraid the great Steinway chase is still on.

Schimmel aims with the new models to step up a class in the quality stakes, which will probably be more of a problem in Germany than elsewhere.  I must say I was very pleased with the new B chaser;  with only 20 bass notes and no break notes, the break was absolutely inaudible.  Their smallest new grand has more covered strings on the long bridge than I have ever seen.  It's difficult at fairs to assess any piano, even in a soundproof room, but it seems to be the new models are a whole lot better than the older styles, enough fro me to recommend one to a customer, which I would not have done before.

JD