Tuning Pin Size

[John Delacour]

At 7:51 AM -0800 1/24/02, David Love wrote:
>John:
>
>Re the tensions on the Schiedmayer.  You're right, they were all over the
>place, zigzagging back and forth.  When I recalculated the scale it came out
>quite different.  What gives with the original idea, do you know?

There were two Schiedmayer factories: Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik 
(formerly J. & P. Schiedmayer) and Schiedmayer und Soehne.  The 
history of the family and the relations between the two is probably 
either interesting or unprintable.  I've spoken a couple of times 
with the last surviving representative who, until a few years ago was 
having the Schiedmayer uprights and grands made by Kawai - and they 
were quite nice.  By this time the firm was making only celestes but 
they owned a huge tract of prime land  in central Stuttgart.  So far 
as I know, this land has now been sold for a considerable fortune and 
presumably old Mr. Schiedmayer is retired in great comfort.  Both 
firms were very highly regarded in their day and won all the medals 
and the royal appointments etc. each victory of the one firm 
presumably increasing the chagrin of the other.  I guess at the 
family feuds only from the few conversations I've had with Mr S.

Both firms used very high tensions on the covered strings and the 
Schiedmayer und Soehne also in the plain wire.  I've mentioned this 
before on the list.  There was a craze at one time followed by 
certain makers for taking the wire to its limits in the quest for 
more power.  I own a S&Soehne overstrung which certainly achieves 
that end, but I know they could have got as good results with a 
shorter scale and a different design.  Nevertheless they are 
tremendous pianos.  I always rescale the bass to make it more lively 
but simply make what adjustments I can in the plain wire scale 
without changing the bridge.

I have only restored one S. Pianofortefabrik and loved it -- even 
better than the S & Soehne.  That was a while ago and I lost the book 
years ago in which I used to record the scales, so I'm only familiar 
with the scaling of the bass.

At 7:34 AM -0800 1/24/02, David Love wrote:
>I don't know the metric, but the pins were .276" and .278" respectively.  I
>went to  a # 2 at .282".

That would be our 7.00 and 7.10 which is to say two and three sizes 
up from what I'd call the #0

I go 6.75, 6.90, 7,00, 7.10, 7.25, new plank, < back to zero < 7.35. 7.5 etc.



JD